#1 A former person who couldn't tidy up reaches 10 years of simple living

"Did you throw this away?" "I can't throw this away."
"I can't throw things away or tidy up because of that person."

Over the 10 years of my simple life,
the questions and consultations I've received have been mostly similar.

Hello, I'm Omayu, a former person who couldn't tidy up.

Nowadays, there are so many excellent tidying experts that you might be tired of hearing about tidying, but I might have a story that only I can tell, so I will summarize it here.

A former person who couldn't tidy up

Although I now live with my husband and two children while keeping my possessions at an appropriate, simple level,
I don't remember ever being praised for tidying up when I was a child.

"A pigsty that even a pig wouldn't live in."
That was the nickname given to my room.

My parents, unable to bear the sight of my messy children's room, would tidy it up for me.
They would gather the things overflowing on my desk and floor into paper bags.

The self-loathing of not being able to do it well again.
I simply didn't know the total amount of things I had.

I would try to organize the scattered items myself in desk drawers or under the bed, but they would just overflow again.

I just didn't know how to tidy up.

That continued even after I became an adult.

When I became a college student and started living alone, cleaning, laundry, tidying up...
Naturally, I had to do all the housework myself.
But as classes and club activities got busy, the house would immediately fall into disarray.

I think it was also unsanitary. And that made me want to touch it even less.

After getting a job and getting married, I became even more distant from a tidy room.

Sometimes I would make a fresh start and try to tidy up or clean, but it wouldn't be maintained.
I felt it really required perseverance.

I thought tidying up was about effort and patience.

That was me, at 38.
Although I have less physical strength and energy than before, I maintain a tidy room.

There is only one reason why it doesn't stay tidy.
"Because there are enough things to make it messy."

"Oh, so throwing things away is important, yeah yeah, minimalist"
to those who thought that.

Well, that's important too (laughs).
Butif you can't do it, you're in trouble, right?.

There is, in a way, a continuation to the story of how things got tidy.
Once I systematized it, it stopped getting cluttered.

“Tidying up” is ultimately just a means to reach an ideal, so it depends on what kind of life you want to lead.

I'll write about that in detail in another note, but
if you want to maintain a tidy room, you must “not rely on effort and patience.”

People often say you should make dieting a habit, but
neither tidying nor dieting will stabilize unless you make them equivalent to living.

And, tidying up is not something you do once and finish.
The correct answer is something that changes.

The trigger for “tidying up” that changed my life

Actually, I had lived a life of wanting to die for a long time.
It's not a heavy story, just a fact.

Ever since I was old enough to understand, I had thought,
“I want to get this over with soon.”
But I was too young at the time to have a concept of “death,” so
“I want to retire” might be a closer feeling.

Anyway, I was passive about living.
Maybe that's why, but regardless, I was sick.

While working as a company employee, I counted down the years until “retirement” on my fingers.
Just thinking about working until retirement age made me want to throw up.

The workplace where I worked at the time was a family-run construction firm, and looking back, I was blessed with a very kind president and supervisor, but I was exhausted by the interpersonal relationships at work.
Or rather, I was tired of working every day and tired of the construction industry itself.

You could say it was because I was young, but I, who was young and overflowing with talent (or so I thought), worried about the future due to the low perspective of those around me, and I grew sick of just staring at the wood grain on my desk.

With the launch of a new department, there were waves in the workload.
At first, I learned enthusiastically, but in an industry where experience is capital, only time passed, and there was also a difference in motivation compared to those around me.
Depressed, I started going to a psychosomatic clinic.

In the end, I had hallucinations and auditory hallucinations, so I was told, “You need to go to a psychiatrist.”

I found it difficult to remain a full-time employee, so I easily threw away the position I held as a chief at a young age and retired from the construction industry where I had stuck it out for five years.

I happily became a full-time housewife.

At the time, my husband was also young, my income was modest, I had almost no savings, and I was nothing but anxious.

No job, no money, no children, no energy, no talent...
The six months that changed my life begin.

Actually, the so-called suicidal ideation I had since childhood
also disappeared around the time I finished tidying up.

I will summarize the tidying process from here on.