How de-cluttering calms the mind

Ever experienced the urge to start cleaning your desk, your room, the seldom-visited corner of the bathroom just when you have a deadline staring you in the face? Rajagopalan, who is conducting a ‘bootcamp’ to help people take control of their spaces, believes that the pandemic has provided us with a “huge reality check” in terms of taking stock of what we own, what we like to use, what we are holding on to, and why. Rohini Rajagopalan Organising queen Marie Kondo and her spectacularly successful KonMari Method of home organization may have brought these beliefs into focus — and given us handy verbal shortcuts to talk about our relationships with things we possess — but psychologists were studying the effects of clearing up much before Kondo emerged on the scene with her now-legendary ‘does this spark joy?’ question. Before and After photos of an a project by Gayatri Gandhi's Joy Factory Besides using the trademarked KonMari Method developed by Kondo, which encourages a way of life in which one retains things that ‘spark joy’ and discards those that don’t, Gandhi has developed her own system of organization taking inspiration from it. The pandemic and lockdown have also shown us that there’s no point in holding on to “nice things” for a future event — be it the best crockery which is reserved for guests who will visit our home maybe once a year, or our favourite perfumes which we hoard for a special occasion, says Rajagopalan.