Close the door on clutter

One extremely messy man embraces the great unknown: an ultra-clean, hyper organised, and “joyous” apartment

- By Jeff Wilser

As an unmarried man who works really hard, travels a ton, and leads an active social life, I've come to accept several less-than-awesome realities about my daily existence. (For starters: I eat way too much take-out, I'm constantly forgetting my toothbrush on trips, and these days, I could probably consume a few less sugary cocktails.) But if there's one piece of man-on-the-go collateral damage I simply can't accept, it's the increasingly gnarly state of my apartment. In recent months, I've found myself engaged in a daily battle against the black hole of my storage closet, the mountain of mismatched clothes scattered across various pieces of furniture, and the towering pile of envelopes on my desk. When it took me a full hour to locate my hiking boots (in a kitchen cupboard?) I realised: Holy shit, I'm messy - and I need an intervention. So, I reached out to Patty Morrissey, a Jedi-level practitioner of the ultra-hot KonMari Method of streamlining your life – inspired by the ultra-popular book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering, by Marie Kondo – for her to whip me into shape. Here's what I learned.

1) Keep only what brings you joy