For me, cleaning is an ongoing process. I am naturally a messy person, but I don’t actually like living in a disorganized environment. It makes me feel less put together. Unfortunately, my cleaning tactics have not actually helped me sustain a tidy environment. I used to do a little bit every day, but this wasn’t successful because as the day progressed the part I had cleaned before had gotten messy again. Thus, I would only end up cleaning the same portion of my room over and over again, while mess would continue to accumulate everywhere else.
I chose to use Kondo’s approach to go through the papers in my dorm room. I did not start with clothes because all the clothes I have in my room has already been sorted out from what I have left at home, and I like all of it. In contrast, I have papers from this semester and last semester which have accumulated all over my room. It has come to the point that I didn’t even know what I had in the piles of papers, and so I thought it was a good place to start.
I was surprised with how many things I had kept that I forgot about. I had playbills from on-campus productions, study sheets, cards, receipts, and the like. I took all the papers and put them in one pile on my bed, which is something I normally wouldn’t do, but was a necessary step in Kondo’s tidying process. It turned out that most of the papers in the pile were useless. For example, I had a whole stack of flyers representing a club I was barely a part of, and which I had no intention of handing out. Why was I keeping all these things? It was eye opening to really get a good look at the objects I kept around me.
Overall, throwing out papers unneeded papers was easy. But I was drawn to the ones which held memories, like the cards and the playbills. They reminded me of my friends and the experiences I had. I decided it was okay to keep those because I didn’t have too many. Did I need them? No. But they gave me joy and I could always put them on my wall and use them as decorations. This is what I did for some.
But there were some moments during this process that I did find oddly difficult. For instance, it was really hard for me to throw out a Spanish grammar sheet. I knew I was never going to need it because I decided not to take Spanish in college, and because I could look up the information if I did need it for some reason, and yet, it was hard to let go. I kept thinking about the possibility of needing it later. But, eventually I realized I was being silly—it was just a grammar sheet!—I threw it out.
I liked using Kondo’s method because it helped clean out parts of my room more efficiently, however it was still hard not to get distracted. It’s a big process and it takes a certain amount of time that I may not have had, if this wasn’t a homework assignment. Thinking back, I didn’t experience too much “joy” with my papers, because they were, well, papers. However, there were a couple of momentos that made me happy to reflect on. This project has made me realize that I keep a lot of things around me that I don’t need in the slightest. I hope to be more mindful with the objects I collect in my future. And now, I have a clear desk! It’s a nice feeling!
The Materials of History, Thought, and Art 
Papers, for me, can also be either incredibly easy or way too hard. I also know I have things that I’m not willing to part with; including copies of my senior thesis, which I have on several hard drives, so why should I even want to hold onto them? Like someone said in class, we have a weird fear of not being able to re-obtain things we’ve lost, even if the things we’re losing have essentially no value. It’s an odd psychological quirk.
I loved this reflection! Honestly your paper collection sounds a lot like mine. I purposely chose NOT to go through my papers for the assignment because I knew that it was too big a job and would get overwhelming very fast. When we’ve been talking in class, though, I had the idea that maybe things you want to save for quick reference/memories could be scanned and stored digitally, not in the cloud but on a small flash drive, so that way they’re not taking up any space in the weird internet ether, but you still have them if you need them? I think this is what I will decide to do with all my important notes from classes that I want to keep for the future. I have actually had times where I was writing on a certain text that I’d studied in another class and rifled through a thousand folders just to find my notes, so this could be an option!