日本收納女王的整理經 整潔改變人生(下)
JENNY NING WAS self-conscious about being one of Kondo’s only employees who had not yet finished tidying(!). What could Kondo possibly think of an employee representing KonMari Inc. to her American base not having her own house in order? Last year, when Kondo visited San Francisco, she came to Ning’s studio apartment, and Ning said she felt very ashamed when Kondo opened her closet. Kondo would visit San Francisco again to introduce the consultancy and maybe even before, and Ning told me she wanted to tidy and to show Kondo the progress. I asked if I could come along and maybe help Ning complete her tidying.
近藤麻裏惠的僱員中有幾個還沒有完成整理，其中就包括詹妮·寧（Jenny Ning，音），她爲此感到有點不好意思。身爲KonMari公司的員工，在美國受衆面前代表着公司的形象，她自己的屋子卻沒有收拾得井井有條，這會讓近藤怎麼想呢？去年，近藤訪問舊金山時來到了寧的公寓。寧說，當近藤打開自己的衣櫥時，自己羞愧極了。近藤還會再來舊金山，啓動這家諮詢公司，甚至可能是在那之前。寧告訴我，她打算好好做一下整理，讓近藤看到自己的進步。我問她我是否能過來，說不定能幫上她的忙呢。
When Ning was little, she loved to collect things: stamps, stickers, pencils. She was never overwhelmed by her stuff. She thinks of her childhood bedroom as “very happy.” But as she grew into adulthood, she kept buying clothing: far too much of it.
寧小時候喜歡收集東西：郵票、貼紙、鉛筆。她從來不會覺得自己的東西是負擔。她覺得自己童年時代的臥室是“非常快樂”的。但是成年以後，她不停地買衣服：買得太多了。
She went to work in finance, but she found the work empty and meaningless. She would come home and find herself overwhelmed by her stuff. So she began searching for “minimalism” on the internet, happening on Pinterest pages of beautiful, empty bathrooms and kitchens, and she began to imagine that it was her stuff that was weighing her down. She read philosophy blogs about materialism and the accumulation of objects. “They just all talked about feeling lighter,” she said. Ning wanted that lightness.
一開始她在金融業工作，但她覺得這份工作空虛而又沒有意義。回到家裏，她總覺得自己被她所擁有的物品壓倒了。於是她開始在網上搜索“極簡主義”。偶然在Pinterest上看到那些空空蕩蕩的漂亮衛生間和廚房，她開始感覺自己擁有的物品成了累贅。她讀到一些關於物質至上主義和物品囤積的哲學博客。“他們都在講一種輕盈的感受，”她說。寧也想感受那種輕盈。
And here, at this moment in the story, Ning began to cry. “I never knew how to get here from there,” she said. She found Kondo’s book, and she felt better immediately, just having read it. She began tidying, and immediately she lost three pounds. She had been trying to lose weight forever, and then suddenly, without effort, three pounds, just gone.
故事講到這兒，寧開始哭泣。“我完全不知道怎麼從那種狀態達到今天這個樣子，”她說。然後，她發現了近藤的書，光是讀一讀，就讓她立刻感覺好了很多。她開始做整理，很快，人就瘦了三磅。她一直在努力減肥，但現在她什麼額外的事情也沒做，就這麼突然一下子瘦了整整三磅。
Ning has thrown away her collections. She wiped her tears and leaned in and told me, like a secret, that she has kept one collection: the stickers. She asked me if I wanted to see her album. She pulled it out from under her bed, pages and pages of Snoopy stickers and stickers of frogs and cupcakes and bunnies in raincoats playing in puddles and Easter baskets. She smiled down at them and touched a few while I thumbed through the pages.
寧已經把自己收集的東西統統扔掉了。她擦乾眼淚，湊到我身邊，像說悄悄話一樣告訴我，她只保留了一種藏品。那就是貼紙。她問我想不想看她的收藏簿。她把它從牀底下拿了出來，裏面是一頁一頁的史努比、青蛙和紙杯蛋糕的貼紙，還有穿着雨衣，在水窪裏玩耍的兔子，以及復活節籃子。她低頭看着它們，臉上露出微笑，我隨手翻動時，她還輕輕地撫摸其中的幾枚貼紙。
A WEEK LATER I was on another assignment, still using the same notebook from the Kondo story. As I flipped through it, passing through the pages of my notes from my time with Ning, I noticed that a tiny blue butterfly sticker had escaped her collection and landed on a page. When I saw the sticker, I froze and put my finger on it. I had had a sticker album, too. It had stickers that smelled like candy canes and purple. It had bubbly heart stickers and star stickers and Mork & Mindy stickers and Peanuts stickers, too.
一週後我有另一項採訪任務，用的還是採訪近藤這篇文章時用的筆記本。我隨手翻頁，翻過採訪寧的那次所做的筆記。我突然發現，有一片小小的藍蝴蝶貼紙從她的收藏裏跑到了我的本子上。看到它，我不覺怔住了，伸出手指去撫摸它。我自己也有過貼紙簿，裏面的貼紙聞上去好像柺棍糖，帶着點紫色的味道。那裏面還有心形泡泡貼紙、星星貼紙、“默克與明迪”(Mork & Mindy)貼紙和花生漫畫貼紙。
I went abroad for a year to Israel after high school. While I was there, the boiler in my house in Brooklyn exploded and a soot fire destroyed all our possessions. “Everyone is OK, but there was a fire,” my father said when I called. I never saw my sticker album again. I never saw anything again. After the place was cleared out, my mother was able to save a few photo albums, because they were closed when the soot invaded the basement and covered and ruined all the surfaces. When I look at the pictures, I don’t ever notice how young or cute my sisters and I were. I look in the background for the items that lie in the incidental path of my mother’s Canon. I try to think of what my life would have been like if I’d returned home to what I left behind, the way my friends were able to return to their homes to what they’d left behind and keep returning, after they finished college and after they got married and after they had kids. I try to think of who I’d be if I weren’t in the habit of looking at my home before I left it each day and mentally preparing myself for the possibility that nothing I owned would be there when I got home that night. I try to know what feelings my lost objects, which I forget more and more as the years pass, would evoke if I could hold them in my hands, KonMari style, like a new kitten. Some would bring joy and some would not, but I’m not someone who thinks that joy is the only valid emotion. I try to remember what I no longer can because, in terms of my possessions, it is as if I was born on my 19th birthday.
中學畢業後，我去以色列呆了一年。在以色列期間，布魯克林家裏的鍋爐爆炸了，煙殆引發的火災燒掉了我們所有的財物。“大家都好，但是着火了，”我打電話過去時，父親告訴我。我永遠地失去了我的貼紙簿，什麼都沒有了。現場收拾乾淨之後，媽媽搶救出幾本相冊，煙殆侵入地下室後，覆蓋並燒燬了所有東西的表面，但相冊是合着的。看着那些照片，我注意的不是我和姊妹們過去有多麼年輕可愛。我只是看着背景中那些被媽媽的佳能相機碰巧拍到的東西。我試着去設想，如果我能回到幼時的家，看到自己留在家裏的那些東西，那樣的生活會是什麼樣？就像我的朋友們可以回家，看到他們留在那裏的東西仍然在那裏，甚至大學畢業或者結婚生子之後，還都保持原樣。我已經養成習慣，每天出門前都要審視家中，做好當晚回來發現自己所有物品都已不見的心理準備。如果我沒有養成這樣的習慣，現在的我又會是個什麼樣的人呢？那些我已經失去的東西，隨着歲月流逝，也漸漸被我淡忘。但我常想，如果我能再次把它們握在手裏，用KonMari的方式，彷彿捧起一隻新生的小貓，那會帶給我怎樣的感受？我想，有些東西一定會帶來快樂，而有些則不會。但我不認爲快樂是唯一正當的情感。我努力回憶那些我已經不記得了的東西，因爲從個人物品的角度來說，我感覺自己彷彿是19歲生日那天才剛剛出生。
The reason I bring this up is to tell you that you could not have any stuff at all, much less too much stuff, and still be totally messed up about it. The reason I tell you this is so that you know that that tiny butterfly sticker has been the same burden to me as any hoarder’s yield. Nostalgia is a beast, and that is either a good reason to KonMari your life, or a terrible one, depending on how you want to live.
我之所以說起這件事，只是想告訴你，就算你什麼東西也沒有，就算你擁有的東西遠遠算不上過多，你還是有可能過得亂七八糟。我告訴你這些，是想讓你明白，那片小小的蝴蝶貼紙對於我來說，也像任何一個集物癖的破爛兒一樣，是一種負擔。懷舊情結是一頭猛獸，如果你想用KonMari法去整理自己的生活，這既是一個好理由，也是一個壞理由，完全取決於你想怎樣生活。
THE LAST TIME I saw Marie Kondo, we were in a hotel room in Midtown, a different one, and still the only visible objects in it were that metal suitcase and her husband’s laptop. But one item had been removed from the suitcase: a spray bottle that she keeps around. She sprays it into the air and the scent signals to her that she is finished working for the day, that her obligations, which seem endless lately, are done. I told her that, to my observation, a company trying to grow the way hers was trying to grow seemed at odds with the personality of someone who required such extreme measures for peace in the first place. “I do feel overwhelmed,” she told me, and she gave me one note of a quiet laugh. People demand a lot of her, not really understanding that you don’t go into a business like tidying if you’re able to handle a normal influx of activity and material. Kondo is not part of a breed of alpha-organizers bent on dominating the world, despite her hashtag. She has more in common with her clients. But when it comes to stuff, we are all the same. Once we’ve eliminated that which does not bring us joy and categorized ourselves within an inch of our lives, we’ll find that the person lying beneath all the stuff was still just plain old us. We are all a mess, even when we’re done tidying. At least Kondo knows it. “I was always more comfortable talking to objects than people,” she told me. At that moment, I could tell that if she had her way, I would leave the hotel room and she would spray her spray and be left alone, so she could ask the empty room if she could clean it.
我上一次見到近藤麻裏惠是在中城的一家酒店房間。不是同一個房間。但房間裏能看到的唯一幾件物品還是隻有她的金屬旅行箱，還有她丈夫的筆記本電腦。不過有一樣東西已經從旅行箱裏拿出來了，就是她的噴霧瓶。她喜歡把香氛噴灑在空氣中，告訴自己一日的工作已經做完，她那些似乎永遠做不完的任務已經完成。我告訴她，據我觀察，一家以如此方式追求成長的公司和一個需要採取如此極端方式追求平和的人，似乎有點格格不入。“我確實感到力不從心，”她告訴我，對我靜靜一笑。人們向她索求很多東西，卻不明白，如果你真能處理好日常生活的種種匆忙和繁亂，也就不會從事“整理”這種行業了。儘管有那樣的井號標籤，但近藤並不是那種一心主導世界的頂級組織者。她和自己的客戶之間其實有着更多相似之處。但是說到身外之物，我們都是一樣的。一旦丟棄了那些不能給我們帶來快樂的東西，拼命地自我歸類，我們會發現，那個身外之物底下的人，仍不過是原來舊我。我們所有人都是一團糟，哪怕是完成了整理之後。至少近藤知道這一點。“和東西說話總是比和人說話更讓我覺得自在，”她告訴我。在那個時刻，我看得出來，如果按照她的心願，我應該馬上離開這個酒店房間，好讓她獨自一個人去噴灑香氛，然後詢問這個房間願不願意被她清理。
