I’m 63 and Japanese The Cleaning I’m Doing Before I Die — So My Children Never Have To

📖 Get Emiko's Cleaning Book, the whole house written down, every mix and every minute: LINK IN BIO OR SCAN THE QR CODE ON THE VIDEO Open the one room in your house that stays closed, the spare room, the basement, the back of the garage, and count the boxes you have not opened since you moved in. I am sixty-three, and the cleaning I do now is for my children, so that one day they never have to stand in my garage and guess. Every thing you own carries a small story that lives only in your head, and the day you are gone, your children must decide about each one without it. You were not careless, my dear. You were busy living, and nobody told you that deciding is a kind of cleaning. When my grandmother died in Japan, my mother emptied her rooms in one afternoon, because my grandmother had done the deciding herself, a little every year. WHAT A FULL HOUSE IS: A thing nobody touches is a thing nobody cleans. Dust settles on it every year and damp climbs into it from the floor. A decision has an age, just like dirt: made today it takes a minute, left for thirty years it takes your children a week. THE ELEVEN: 1. THE BOXES YOU NEVER OPENED. One box every Sunday, twenty minutes. Write on the lid what is inside and what you want done with it. What you keep goes on a shelf, NEVER on a concrete floor or against an outside wall. 2. THE THINGS YOU ARE KEEPING FOR YOUR CHILDREN. Read them the list and ask. Give the yes things now, while you can watch them used. 3. HALF OF YOUR CLOSET. Keep what you wore in the last year. Turn every hanger backward; in six months the backward ones give you your answer. 4. THE SECOND OF EVERYTHING. Match every container to its lid. No partner, it goes. Six glass jars with lids instead. 5. THE GARAGE SHELF. Old paint, unlabeled jars, poisons go to your county's household chemical collection day. Label what you keep with what it is and the year. NEVER pour two old bottles together. 6. THE PHOTOGRAPHS. Names and the year on the back in soft pencil, NEVER a ballpoint pen. One album for each child. 7. THE SPARE SHEETS AND BLANKETS. Two sets for each bed, two blankets for each bed. Worn sheets become cloths. 8. THE BOX YOU WILL PUT OFF. Take it out of the dark first. Use the bowls, keep the letters in one folder, and write down what each thing is and who it came from. 9. THE BOOKS. One shelf a day: take them down, wipe the shelf, put back only what you would read again. 10. THE HEAVY FURNITURE. Look behind the heaviest piece on an outside wall with a flashlight. A cold wall behind furniture is where the gray spots begin. 11. THE NOTEBOOK. One plain notebook in the kitchen drawer: where your papers are, who to call, which key opens what, what is in each box, and what you want. Correct it every new year. THE HONEST PART: Decide only for your own things, never for a husband's or a sister's. Nothing from the garage goes down a drain or into the kitchen trash, and chlorine bleach NEVER meets an acid or ammonia. Papers with your name and numbers on them are shredded, never put whole in the curb trash. Do not do it in one weekend: one box, one drawer, one shelf, boxes half full, pushed and not lifted. One box marked "mine, simply because" is allowed. WHY NOBODY TOLD YOU: Four storage bins 48 dollars, vacuum bags 25, a label maker 30, and a storage unit often 140 dollars a month, which is 1,680 dollars a year for boxes you have not opened. Against that: a marker, a notebook, and your Sunday afternoons. Tonight: open one box from the closed room and write on its lid what is inside. Then tell me in the comments how many boxes in your house you have not opened since you moved in, and how old your house is. Not one of them goes unread.