Back in March, the NYT Wirecutter launched a six-day decluttering challenge. I love Wirecutter and can spend hours going down rabbit holes about the best vacuum cleaners, clothes hangers, pots and pans, dish soap, towels - you get the idea. I get a lot of great advice from their posts, so I’m definitely going to do the six-day challenge. Even as a tidying expert, I can always learn new things.

Perhaps my propensity to be lured by advertisements and deals drew me to this work. When I was asked to model jewelry for a museum when I was six years old, I wanted ALL the jewelry. When I was around the same age, my parents had a friend call to impersonate Santa. When he asked me what I would like for Christmas, I had a list of items based on commercials I saw during my Saturday morning cartoons.

You may be familiar with Marie Kondo. She has written books on tidying, and you can find her on Netflix. In 2014, I read her book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and went through my home category by category following her method (or so I thought). When my husband and I moved to New Mexico in 2021, I wondered how we could still have so much stuff! I thought I had gone through everything and kept only what I loved.