Personal Essay Submission

In 2016, I felt stuck. 

I was living in the small town I had grown up in, working two dead-end jobs, and struggling to stay above the poverty line. Every day, I got up at 3 am and worked until 7 pm. I came home, ate whatever pasta or frozen pizza I had the energy to make, drank a 6-pack of Budlight, and went to bed. In the morning, I would wake up, drink a pot of coffee, and repeat. When I could get a day off, I loved to go rummage through thrift stores, where I found joy in vintage items. I hauled each piece back to my low-income apartment with glee, ready to add it to my growing collection of thrift store treasures. However, over time, these thrift store adventures began to inspire a sense of dread: I had already found so much “treasure” that new treasures felt empty. Did I really like this? Didn’t I already have one like it? Where would I put it? (Think: The Little Mermaid with one too many forks and an urgent sense of, “Do I even like forks?”)

So, I began to research organization methods, consuming decluttering Youtube videos like they were the empty carbs and coffee on which I was sustaining myself, until I stumbled across Marie Kondo’s book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Within that book, I found a philosophy that resonated with me: envision the life you want to have and proceed accordingly. While everything in my apartment was neat and orderly, I could see that there was just too much stuff. And that’s what it was. Just stuff. I began to get rid of everything. Every free moment was spent holding an object in my hands and asking myself if it made me happy and thanking each item for fulfilling its purpose in my life. With every item I donated back to the thrift store, I felt lighter and could breathe easier.

Finally, I had an apartment that didn’t feel like an anchor.

The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up inspired me to learn to let go. Having never quit a job in over a decade of working, in 2017, I quit two jobs. It was terrifying. It was exhilarating. Even though I was worried about putting myself out there and trying to find a new job, the first morning my alarm didn’t go off at 3 am was liberating. After quitting one job, I received an opportunity to move my life to New York City and work for a startup, so I quit my second job and began packing. Before Marie Kondo, it had never occurred to me that I could let go of something that didn’t bring me happiness, including my job.

I realized, then, what all my KonMari cleaning had been leading up to.

In all my fervent decluttering, I had been letting go of my emotional and physical attachments that were no longer serving me. Each carload of physical “stuff” that went to the thrift released emotional attachments. I realized I didn’t need to build my life with stuff to build a life. Letting go of the stuff inside my apartment taught me that I could let go of my apartment altogether. Marie Kondo empowered me to step towards a life I wanted so that, when the time came, I was unafraid to step on a one-way flight to New York City with my life in two suitcases.