整理衣橱，以怦然心动为标准

整理衣橱，以怦然心动为标准

By her own account, Marie Kondo was an unusual child, poring over lifestyle magazines to glean organizing techniques and then stealthily practicing them at home and school, confounding her family and bemusing her teachers.

用近藤麻里绘(Marie Kondo)自己的话说，她打小就与众不同——研读生活方式杂志，收集整理技巧，然后悄悄在家和学校实践它们，令家人和老师们迷惑不解。

As she writes in “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing,” which comes out this month in the United States and is already a best seller in her native Japan and in Europe, she habitually sneaked into her siblings’ rooms to throw away their unused toys and clothes and ducked out of recess to organize her classroom’s bookshelves and mop closet, grumbling about poor storage methodologies and pining for an S-hook.

她的《怦然心动的人生整理魔法》(The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing)在日本和欧洲已是畅销书，本月在美国出版。她在书中写道，她经常偷偷跑到兄弟姊妹们的房间，扔掉不用的玩具和衣服，课间休息时整理教室书架，打扫壁橱，抱怨糟糕的存储方法，渴望得到一个S型钩。

The contents of one of Ms. Kondo’s own drawers.

近藤自己的抽屉。

Now 30, Ms. Kondo is a celebrity of sorts at home, the subject of a TV movie, with a three-month waiting list for her decluttering services — until recently, that is, because she has stopped taking clients to focus on training others in her methods. Last Friday, I brought her book home to practice them.

如今，30岁的近藤在日本几乎是个名人，有人根据她的事迹拍了一部电视电影，预约她的整理服务要等三个月。最近，她不再接新客户，而是专心传授整理方法。上周五，我把她的书带回家开始实践。

What better moment to drill down and ponder the fretful contents of one’s sock drawer? Global and national news was careering from the merely hysterical to the nonsensical (the Ebola cruise ship incident was just peaking). Closer to home, other anxieties beckoned. But in my apartment on Second Avenue, the world was no larger than my closet, and I was talking to my T-shirts.

这难道不是思考和清理令人烦躁的袜子抽屉的最佳时机吗?国际新闻和国内新闻正从歇斯底里变为极其荒谬(埃博拉游轮事件简直登峰造极)。回到家里，其他头疼的事就开始向你招手了。在我位于第二大道的公寓里，我的壁橱就是整个世界，我正在跟我的T恤说话。

Let me explain. Ms. Kondo’s decluttering theories are unique, and can be reduced to two basic tenets: Discard everything that does not “spark joy,” after thanking the objects that are getting the heave-ho for their service; and do not buy organizing equipment — your home already has all the storage you need.

让我解释一下。近藤的整理理论独一无二，可以简述为两个基本原则：感谢那些要退役的东西曾为你服务，然后扔掉所有不能让你“怦然心动”的东西;不要买整理用具——你家里的存放器具已经够用了。

Obsessive, gently self-mocking and tender toward the life cycle of, say, a pair of socks, Ms. Kondo delivers her tidy manifesto like a kind of Zen nanny, both hortatory and animistic.

近藤带着对所有物品(哪怕是一双袜子)生命轮回的迷恋和关切，也带着一点自嘲，展示自己的整理宣言，像是禅宗的保姆，既是忠告，也带着万物有灵色彩。

“Don’t just open up your closet and decide after a cursory glance that everything in it gives you a thrill,” she writes. “You must take each outfit in your hand.”

“不要打开你的壁橱、匆忙看一眼就认定里面所有的东西都让你紧张，”她写道，“你应该把每件东西拿在手上思考。”

“Does it spark joy?” would seem to set the bar awfully high for a T-shirt or a pair of jeans, but it turns out to be a more efficacious sorting mechanism than the old saws: Is it out of style? Have you worn it in the last year? Does it still fit?

“它能让你怦然心动吗?”——对T恤或牛仔裤来说，这个标准似乎很高，但结果证明，与传统衡量方法——比如，它过时了吗?过去一年中你穿它了吗?它还合身吗?——相比，这个分类机制更有效。

Alone in my bedroom, with the contents of both closets strewn over every surface, I fondled stretch velvet pants (don’t judge me) and enough fringed scarves to outfit an army of Stevie Nicks fans, and shed a tear or two for my younger self. (Where did the time go?)

我一个人在卧室里，看着两个塞得满满的壁橱，爱抚我的天鹅绒弹力裤(不要对我评头论足)和流苏围巾——这些围巾多得够给史蒂薇·尼克斯(Stevie Nicks)的粉丝大军们每人发一条——为逝去的青春掉了一两滴眼泪(时间都去哪儿了?)。

“Sparking joy,” I realized, can be a flexible concept: That which is itchy, or too hot, is certainly joyless. So is anything baggy, droopy or with a flared leg.

我意识到，“怦然心动”这个标准比较灵活：穿着发痒或太热的衣服肯定不能带来快乐。所有松松垮垮、没精打采的衣服和喇叭裤也是如此。

Tidying is a dialogue with oneself, Ms. Kondo writes.

近藤写道，整理是与自己的对话。

Of course, after 10 or 12 hours of this, you get a bit silly. You forget to thank your discards. (Country music can help. Try George Jones and Lucinda Williams.) By 9 p.m., I had lost Ms. Kondo’s book in the layers of clothing, hangers and shoe boxes. And my glasses, too.

当然，在整理10个或12个小时之后，你会变得有点傻。你会忘记感谢要扔的东西(乡村音乐有所帮助。可以试试乔治·琼斯[George Jones]或露辛达·威廉姆斯[Lucinda Williams]的歌)。到晚上9点，近藤的书已经迷失在一层层衣服、衣架和鞋盒中了。我的眼镜也找不着了。

How to distinguish one black turtleneck from another? Why would anyone buy purple tights? What is joy, anyway?

我为什么要买两件黑色高领毛衣?它们有区别吗?我为什么会买紫色紧身裤?到底什么是快乐?

At 1 a.m., my daughter appeared, raised an eyebrow at the piles still obliterating my bed and offered up her own. But I was ready to fold, the primal act of Ms. Kondo’s method.

凌晨1点，女儿来到我的房间，看着床上的一堆堆东西扬起了眉毛，把她的衣服也拿了过来。但是我要开始折叠了——折叠是近藤方法中最主要的步骤。

You can find YouTube videos of her technique, but it’s not so hard: Fold everything into a long rectangle, then fold that in upon itself to make a smaller rectangle, and then roll that up into a tube, like a sushi roll. Set these upright in your drawers. And pour your heart into it, Ms. Kondo urges: Thank your stuff, it’s been working hard for you.

你能在YouTube上找到她的技巧视频，其实并不太难：把所有东西都叠成长长的矩形，再把它叠成小一点的矩形，然后卷成一个管，就像寿司卷那样。把它们竖着放在抽屉里。近藤鼓励你用心去做：感谢你的物品，因为它们一直在努力为你服务。

“When we take our clothes in our hands and fold them neatly,” she writes, “we are, I believe, transmitting energy, which has a positive effect on our clothes.”

“我们把衣服拿在手中折叠整齐时，”她写道，“我认为，我们在传递能量，给衣服带来正能量。”

She proposes a similarly agreeable technique for hanging clothing. Hang up anything that looks happier hung up, and arrange like with like, working from left to right, with dark, heavy clothing on the left: “Clothes, like people, can relax more freely when in the company of others who are very similar in type, and therefore organizing them by category helps them feel more comfortable and secure.”

她还提到一个同样令人愉快的挂衣服技巧。把任何挂起来显得更快乐的东西挂起来，把同类物品放在一起，从左向右排列，把黑色厚重的衣服放在左边：“和人一样，衣服有同类陪伴会更放松、更自由，所以分类整理会让它们感觉更舒服、更安全。”

Such anthropomorphism and nondualism, so familiar in Japanese culture, as Leonard Koren, a design theorist who has written extensively on Japanese aesthetics, told me recently, was an epiphany to this Westerner. In Japan, a hyper-awareness, even reverence, for objects is a rational response to geography, said Mr. Koren, who spent 10 years there and is the author of “Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers.”

这样的拟人观和泛神论在日本文化中十分常见。伦纳德·科伦(Leonard Koren)是一位设计理论家，他写过关于日本美学各个方面的文章。前不久他告诉我，这样的观念对他这位西方人来说简直是醍醐灌顶。科伦说，日本人对物品的过分在意甚至敬畏是对日本地形的理性反应。他在日本待了十年，曾出版《侘寂对艺术家、设计师、诗人和哲学家的意义》(Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers)。

“Think of the kimono, and the tradition of folding,” he said. “There is also the furoshiki, which is basically a square of flat cloth used daily to wrap packages. Folding is deep and pervasive in Japanese culture. Folding is a key strategy of modular systems that have evolved because of limited living space.”

“想一想日本的和服和折叠传统，”他说，“还有风吕敷——它其实就是日常裹包袱的方布。折叠深刻而普遍地存在于日本文化中。折叠是模块化系统的关键方法，是由于生活空间有限而演生出来的。”

He added: “More spiritually, the idea of non-dualism is a relationship to reality that proposes that everything is inextricably connected and alive, even inanimate objects. If we are compassionate and respectful to everything that exists, then we would have to be compassionate about the socks in the drawer that aren’t folded properly.”

他补充说：“从更深的精神层面讲，泛神论是与现实的一种关系，它认为一切事物都是紧密相连的、有生命的，甚至包括静物。如果我们同情、尊重所有存在的东西，那么我们就必然会同情抽屉里没叠好的袜子。”

Indeed, Ms. Kondo’s instructions regarding socks are eye-opening. Socks bust their chops for you, and if you ball them up, they don’t get a chance to rest. As she puts it, “The socks and stockings stored in your drawer are essentially on holiday.”

的确，近藤对袜子的理解让人大开眼界。袜子努力为你服务，如果你把它们弄得一团糟，它们就没机会好好休息。就像她说的，“存放在你抽屉里的袜子实际上是在度假。”

Mine were obviously having a terrible time, torqued and twisted like coach passengers on an overcrowded flight to Europe.

我的袜子显然活得很惨，一个个东扭西歪，像坐在飞往欧洲的过于拥挤的航班上。

My weekend was lost to Ms. Kondo. After three days, I had given four bags of clothing and two bags of shoes to the Salvation Army, along with two dead computers. (Like Staples and Best Buy in New York City, the Salvation Army is a recycling drop-off location for electronics.) Two-thirds of my fridge — jam dating to 2010, undated tubes of tomato paste — ended up in the trash.

我的周末献给了近藤。三天后，我把四袋衣服和两袋鞋子捐给了救世军组织(Salvation Army)，一道送去的还有两台废弃的电脑(与纽约市的史泰博办公用品公司[Staples]和百思买电器商店[Best Buy]一样，救世军组织也是一个电子产品回收点)。我扔掉了冰箱里三分之二的东西——包括2010年的果酱和几管日期不明的番茄酱。

“Where is all the food?” my daughter wailed.

“吃的都哪儿去了?”我女儿悲叹道。

Giddy, I twirled ribbons into circles and nestled them in a drawer with a stack of tissue paper, notecards and rolls of Scotch tape. I threw lone gloves out with near drunken abandon. And I smugly noted that my hoarding habits could be worse. In a section titled “Astounding Stockpiles I Have Seen,” Ms. Kondo writes of the client with 60 toothbrushes and of another with 80 rolls of toilet paper. The record, she says, was the client who stockpiled 20,000 cotton swabs.

我头晕目眩地把丝带卷成圈，让它们和抽屉里的一堆纸巾、记事卡和透明胶带依偎在一起。我带着微醺的狂放，扔掉了那些单只手套。我自鸣得意地发现，我的囤积习惯还不算严重。近藤的书中有一章叫“我见过的令人震惊的囤积”，里面提到，有一位客户存了60把牙刷，还有一位客户存了80卷卫生纸。她说，最令人震惊的是一位客户存了两万根棉签。