I recently watched a video where women talked about the life-changing nature of KonMari-ing their closets. How their wardrobe reviews boosted their personal power, and made them happy.
I haven’t read the book, but I get the impression it’s a method of systematically removing extraneous matter from your home by keeping only those things that make you happy.
Or maybe just the ones that make you VERY happy, I’m not sure.
The women in the video were talking about how the method gave them permission to get rid of things that they not only didn’t love but didn’t like in the slightest.
There were a lot of things that bothered me (but we don’t have time to go into them all), so the two things that really bothered me about the discussions:
- The women were treating their own desires as irrelevant, making decisions based entirely on what other people wanted.
- They were allowing themselves to be treated like children who are incapable of making appropriate decisions for themselves.
So how does it come around that you willingly give up your power to someone else?
I want you to imagine a different time. Imagine that your early life was devoted to training you to make other people happy; to sacrifice your happiness for the overall benefit of your family.
Well not even that really, but to completely fail to recognise that you have any desires other than to make other people happy.
Historically, that’s not unusual, women have been sacrificing for thousands of years whether by choice or not.
Sometimes these are big sacrifices like permitting people you don’t like to hug and/or kiss you just because they are family or family friends.
Or giving up the last fancy biscuit to your brother…
Sometimes little things like particular chore sets, talking quietly or not running in the house.
I don’t think things really started to change until the 1980s.
The notion of marriage as a form of prostitution (trading sex for security) was breaking out of academia and into the mainstream media.
Katy’s recently divorced mother was in vehement agreement while my own thought it was a load of tosh.
I’d like to think things have improved, but I am afraid they haven’t.
For more or less the same reasons as I talked about International Women’s Day, and marriageable men.
Anyway, I think that this early training and wanting to be liked is where it all starts.
Pretending to be dumber than your boyfriend, that you don’t mind that he expects you to buy his family gifts and that you really do want to stay home and watch sport rather than going out for dinner and a movie (Yes, I know, some women do prefer the sport, I’m just not one of them.)
All small meaningless sacrifices that give away your power and cheat him from knowing who the authentic you really is.
Once the wedding is over, Bridezilla goes in the box along with your wedding dress and bouquet. She sits silently on the top of your closet.
You emulate mother’s example, fully embracing your training by taking it to the next level.
You lay aside your maiden’s clothing with your maiden name and start dressing more modestly so your husband doesn’t need to worry that anyone else might be attracted to you and waste his energy getting jealous.
You stop cutting your hair because he likes it long.
Sacrifice by sacrifice you allow the central core of yourself to fade away and disappear.
And then your husband looks at what you’ve become (as Katy’s father did). and trades you in for a younger more exciting woman leaving you with a closet full of clothes that don’t reflect who you are.
Now I can testify to the value of a good closet clean out.
My post-transplant wardrobe review was an eye opener in terms of who those clothes belonged to.
I’ve mentioned this before relating to the virtue of beauty. Particularly relating to your personal presentation, but to your home and garden as well.
And I know how easy it is to fixate on what you think are your physical “flaws” and stop seeing yourself as a whole. Now that I think about itm that probably doesn’t help in the personal power department either.
Where do you go from here?
How do you get to know yourself again?
How do you recover your lost power and teach people who know you as a doormat how to treat you better?
More importantly, how do you teach your daughters to grow into their authentic selves and never let them go?
Bit by bit.
Start with one little thing, hold that line and keep moving it forward.
And a KonMari wardrobe review is a pretty good place to start:
- take your yes/no gut reactions as a guide, and learn how it feels to want and not want something.
- learn how to have a conversation with your partner/parents/whoever that says. I appreciate the thought behind this (crappy) gift but it doesn’t make me happy and I don’t want it in my house.
- think about what you need in your life to make you happy.
What do you think?
Could you learn who you really are and what you really like by doing a wardrobe review and discarding things that don’t fit anymore?
Edited 2024: almost a decade later, and this is still an issue.
For more, see my wardrobe planning page.
Signature Wardrobe Planning
Buying clothes seems easy, but getting matching ones that fit you and your lifestyle and share washing instructions is more difficult.
Signature Wardrobe Planning shares a plan for buying the right clothes at the right price for the right life. So you always have something to wear that makes you look and feel confident.
Discover the four-step system for developing your wardrobe plan. Buy now:
