Hi everyone – it’s me, the Sparkly Single Girl, version 2019. I’m launching back into the blog with a topic that now makes everyone’s hearts pitter patter with “joy” (omg, get it?!).

Unless you’ve been living under a rock for the past month, you may have heard of Marie Kondo and her book/new series on Netflix, “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up”. Since the series’s release on January 1st, donation centers around America have been over-loaded with our clothes, books, Ikea furniture, and general knick-knacks, after having been inspired by Marie to de-clutter our homes and our lives.

I, too, was inspired by this new way of living – get rid of my size 6 jeans that will (sadly) never fit again, you say? Bid adieu to the old bridesmaids dresses (sorry ladies) that I actually won’t ever wear again, you encourage? Exclaim adios to 100 tangled cords from electronic devices that will only be antiques to my future children, you demand? Well Marie, you didn’t have to tell me three times – I was on board from the start!

The tiny jeans, out-dated bridesmaids dresses, and knotted cords are easy for us all…but then it comes time for the harder stuff, the bigger stuff. The stuff that doesn’t necessarily fit so easily in a box.

Luckily for us, Marie has a tidying method that even includes those hard things.

1. Commit to tidying up all at once.

This is the crucial beginning to the tidying up process – when you only do things a bit as you go, you don’t always make a big enough dent in the issue. Marie says, “the ultimate secret to success is this: if you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mindset”.

She was right. I tried bit by bit for quite sometime, but things tended to spill over to just more things. Eventually, it was time to sit down, make a list, and just try to save all the important stuff in one sweep.

2. Does this spark joy?

Next, Marie requires that you remove everything from your drawers, closets, and hiding places, put it all in a pile on the floor, hold each item in your hand, and ask yourself…”Does this bring me joy?”.

If the answer is yes, you keep it. If the answer is no, you don’t.

For me, when it came time to put all the “non-joyful” things together in a pile, the sheer weight of it was overwhelming. It just wasn’t right to continue living like that, and looking at it all as a whole, it was honestly terrifying. How could I have been living my life for so long with so many things that didn’t make me happy?

3. Thank you, next.

The simultaneously most simple and complex of Marie’s steps: get rid of it. Take all those things that didn’t bring you joy, thank each item for its service, and rid it from your life.

For me (and I think, for most) this was my hardest step. Deciding what no longer brought me joy was easy – I think naming what doesn’t is surprisingly uncomplicated for most people, once you really set out to do it. The hard part for me, though, was the gratitude. Thanking these things for taking up space in my life? For only bringing me more clutter, more sadness, more pain?

I may not have been able to genuinely thank everything, but I tried as best I could. I suppose for me, the transformation didn’t happen as I said goodbye to the things in my life that I no longer wanted, but rather as I could noticeably see all the things in my life that did spark joy.

4. Organize by category.

This is it, the final step. All that’s left is to decide where you’re keeping whatever you’ve decided is most important to be kept. Store everything of the same type and of the same size in one, same place.

As I packed up my boxes of my most precious, joyful items, I thoughtfully organized what was left. My beloved coffee table books full of beautiful tablescapes and wedding gowns went into one pile, and would easily fit on my bookshelves. My size 14 jeans (go suck it, size 6 jeans) and precious jewelry into another box, ready to fit seamlessly into my closest and dresser drawers. My diplomas and many client files into a third, ready for walls and cabinets, and on and on, until the very biggest, most beautiful, hard-to-fit items – my dignity, my strength, my generosity, my friendship, my honesty. All desperately trying to make it’s way back into one comfortable me-sized body, which had felt cluttered for so long.

It’s been 6 weeks, and all in all, I’m feeling much better than I was when I started this process.

Tidying up your home, or your life, is hard. It’s so easy to get to a point where you’re honestly just comfortable living in the mess you’ve made for yourself, because it’s scarier to admit anything different. I think Marie’s ultimate point is just letting us all know that it’s healthy to occasionally evaluate the things that take up space in our lives, for better or for worse.

And at the end of the day? Sometimes you just have to throw all your shit in a pile on the floor, face the facts, and ask yourself the tough questions.

When it comes to relationships, although the right choice may not always be as easy as getting rid of an old pair of jeans, sometimes you may need to step back, put it in the palm of your hands, take a deep breath, and ask yourself:

Does this bring me joy?

This is why I’m single (and a little bit lighter).