My three year-old is a big fan of Marie Kondo. Admittedly, so am I. “Does it bring you joy?” was a common refrain in our family this summer. It’s my tween, interestingly enough, that is the greatest tidying up convert in the house. Truth. That alone should have you people rushing out to buy this book.

Confession: I am not a tidy person. I’d like to be, but not for reasons you might expect. The KonMarie method seems deceptively simple. Go through all your things, ask yourself if they bring you joy. If they do, keep them. If they don’t, chuck ’em.

I’ve always wanted to be a little more organized. Who doesn’t?? I don’t really give a fig if things are messy, because I thrive on a bit of uncultivated clutter. The reason I have become a Kondo convert is because the method asks you to hone in on everything that brings you joy.

Man alive, when do we do that? People talk about blessings and how grateful they are, lovely sentiments, but when do you go through the process of categorically deciding what brings you joy? The flip-side is that you begin to be able to articulate what you don’t like, even if it sounds weird.

Here’s what I’ve found… I can’t stand t-shirts with seams, wooden utensils make my teeth itch, and silverware should be heavy and pleasing to touch. I could go on and on. It starts to leak into other parts of your life: people, where you go, how you spend your time. It’s the reason that I recently booked a family vacation instead of paying for more mudroom storage. Screw cupboards, I need some sun.

Clearly I can’t escape on vacation all the time, and not everything I do brings me joy, but we all have the option of surrounding ourselves, to the greatest extent possible, with things and people that brighten our days. I live in Minnesota, nice is our currency. I’m a woman and mother, anything less than nice is bitchy. Revolutions can start in your home though. If you can’t choose what you like and what makes your teeth itch in your own home, where can you be honest?

My library, pictured above, is still casually cluttered, which is exactly what I believe a library should look like. Full, warm, with a ton of books to explore. And that brings me joy indeed (plus delight, pleasure, jubilation, happiness, gladness, glee, exhilaration, exuberance, elation, euphoria, and bliss). What brings YOU joy?

Keep sharing moxie!