We've all seen the Weight Watchers cookbooks, the magazine covers riddled with articles on the “hottest new” diets, but have you ever considered the length to which these pieces clutter our minds and our homes? Dieting is an industry, a $58 billion one at that. That’s $58 billion worth of diet books, supplements, fad fitness equipment, calorie-tracking apps, and chalky meal replacements. No matter how great the latest miracle weight-loss cure product claims to be, the diet industry will without fail supply us with the next best thing, the latest protein powder or exercise style that will finally be the thing that makes us thin. With each new trend, the diet-culture clutter in our hearts and homes accumulates.
Diet-culture keeps us perpetually focused on how we are not good enough because we’re not thin/shapely/beautiful/whatever enough. We’re not worthy of attention. We’re not worthy of clothes that fit. We don’t deserve meals that satisfy us. The shame, fatphobia, and self-hate encouraged by diet-culture keep us constantly shopping for clothes that will make us look thinner, foods engineered to have minimal carbs, exercise equipment that promises to deliver thigh gap, fad diet books that might *finally* make us thin enough, and “fat blasting” supplements galore.
Every home I’ve worked in has been cluttered with diet-culture driven purchases. Every closet I’ve organized has had “fat clothes” and “thin clothes” that have often sat untouched for years. I cannot count the number of diet books I’ve seen discarded, usually half-read and bookmarked with torn out magazine workout plans. The amount of recipes and workout plans ripped out of magazines or printed off the internet by the average woman is astounding. Every kitchen I’ve worked in has been cluttered with some disused diet-industry food product or supplement.
This clutter that you see when you open a stuffed closet, glance over your bookshelf, or scan your pantry is telling you something. It is communicating to you that your body is lacking, that you are not enough, that you aren’t trying hard enough, that this should be your priority. This clutter is silently, visually shaming you, reinforcing the message that being thin is the most important thing for you to work towards...and you are failing. It’s telling you that your hunger doesn’t matter, your fatigue doesn’t matter, your health doesn’t matter. And your happiness doesn’t matter either. Only the size of your body matters.
These messages the diet-industry drives into us have the over-arching affect of getting us to stop listening to ourselves. Instead of paying attention to our own internal signals of needs, like enough food and rest, we live our lives according to someone else’s notion of what they think we need. Instead of eating when hungry, we drink some water because a weight-loss book says it’s two hours too early for food. Instead of noticing how tired we are, we go to a workout class because we have to go exactly 4 times a week every week. Losing touch with our body’s biological signals is one of the most pernicious, detrimental aspects of diet-culture. It can lead to serious long-term physical, mental, and emotional health consequences.
Unfortunately, this same trend of no longer listening to ourselves carries into home organization in general. So often, clutter accumulates because we’ve stopped hearing our internal messages. We’ve stopped noticing or caring when something bothers us, when a boundary is crossed, when we’re inconvenienced, when we’re overwhelmed. Instead, we put our heads down and power forward. We just keep going, without taking a moment to question what direction we’re moving in and if we even want to go that way. We survive instead of thrive, leaving all the things we can’t take the time to evaluate or address in our wake as clutter.
The tired refrain of “keep going, you’re not thin/fit/trim/healthy/buff/whatever enough” keeps us stuck in that same mode. The clutter and the shame are holding us back, wasting so much of our energy, time, and money on hating our bodies. To live your life motivated by shame is to live your life without joy.
When I first heard about the KonMari Method, I was in my late 20s living in Washington, DC. I had recently lost a substantial amount of weight and was experiencing a whole different world, one where my body was celebrated and desired instead of feared and shunned. I took in the message that I needed to stay thin and get even thinner, that I needed to be as “healthy” as possible (thin ≠ healthy; fat ≠ unhealthy). I let my societally-induced shame of having body fat become my sole motivation in life. That shame propelled me into a disordered relationship with eating and exercise, an unsustainable lifestyle utterly void of joy.
I spent nearly all of my time outside of work went into maintaining the strict regimen required to keep me thin. It left me very little time to build and maintain relationships, to date, to develop hobbies, or enjoy all the events and life a city has to offer. I had no time to explore and understand myself, to work on any aspirations I had for my life beyond those I had for my body.
I’ve since done a lot of work on my own eating disorder, body image, and self-worth issues. As convenient as it may sound, organizing my home was the first baby step I took on the journey to a better relationship with my body. The KonMari process invited me to listen to myself instead of shame myself. Going through my clothes and asking myself if they really sparked joy or made me happy showed me that…they didn’t. That I had made all of these small decisions about what to wear, what to eat, what to buy, and how to live without ever once asking myself what I really liked or wanted. It astonished me to realize how much of the stuff I surrounded myself with and used every day I didn’t even like!
One of the biggest parts of my work with clients is to help them discover the direction they want to move in and what their true values are to motivate them to get there. Dropping shame and finding self-compassion is vital for moving into a new way of living, a new clutter-free home. Reckoning with our own internalized fatphobia, diet-culture, and self-hatred unlocks that compassion for ourselves and for others, allowing us to see our clutter as a symptom and not a failing. Decluttering the evidence of diet-culture in your home makes space for a much more important voice – your own.