As a teenager, I shared a wardrobe with my sister. Her side was always impeccably tidy and beautifully organised, while mine was... well, mine. Organised in my own way, which my mother simply could not accept. Regularly, just before I was supposed to go out on a Saturday night, my clothes would end up on the floor of our room because my mother had concluded that blackmail along the lines of "You're not going anywhere until you tidy your wardrobe" was the only truly effective method.
When it comes to folding and sewing clothes, I simply have two left hands. That is why my mother found it endlessly amusing when I told her that I had found my first job, and that it was in a luxury clothing store. She found it even more entertaining when she discovered that part of my job involved folding clothes and arranging them neatly on the shelves. My manager at the time would simply roll her eyes after watching me finally manage to fold a T-shirt with the help of a plastic folding template. Eventually, she simply gave up on me in that particular area. But apart from struggling with my natural clumsiness when it came to clothes, as an introvert I suddenly had to learn how to become an extrovert, to smile at people and have conversations with them. I don't know exactly how, but within a surprisingly short period of time I managed to build a circle of customers who would come into the store and ask specifically for me. My honesty when they asked how something looked on them was probably refreshing, as was the effort I made to find something that genuinely suited them. That short period of my life taught me an important lesson: I can learn many things, and not everything has to be perfect for me to achieve a result. And the things I am simply not good at? I leave them alone and allow them to remain a source of laughter at family gatherings.
Today, I sort through my clothes and do an inventory of my wardrobe once a year. I go through everything, get rid of what I no longer use or what no longer suits me, and donate it to someone else. My wardrobe is much tidier now than it was during my teenage years, but it will never look like the ones you see in a clothing store, or like my mother's. When you open my wardrobe, my imperfect signature is visible on every shelf and inside every drawer.
And yet, there is one thing I don't have, but which my mother, and my late nonne - always kept. It is that special shelf "just in case", a clean nightgown, underwear, and clothes ready for hospital or for that proverbial "God forbid something worse happens." Those nightgowns and pyjamas often outlive the very purpose for which they were bought and, never worn, solemnly preserve their place in the wardrobe. And somehow, even today, whenever I open my mother's wardrobe and see that shelf, I quietly find myself wishing that it will remain exactly as it is for as long as possible - untouched. Some things, apparently, we do not keep because we need them. We keep them because they represent something we hope we will never need.
The Japanese have their own philosophy of decluttering and simplifying life - Danshari. The name consists of three Japanese concepts, each describing one step in the process of freeing ourselves from what is unnecessary: Dan- Refusal: the ability to say "no" to new and unnecessary things entering our lives, such as avoiding impulsive purchases; Sha - Disposal: physically letting go of and discarding the things we already own that no longer serve us or bring us happiness; and Ri - Detachment: reaching a state of mind in which we are no longer attached to material possessions. This is the ultimate goal, a sense of freedom in which things no longer control our emotions or the space around us.
Danshari did not emerge as just another method for organising wardrobes. Its roots lie in the philosophy of yoga, from which the Japanese author Hideko Yamashita drew the ideas of refusing what is unnecessary, letting go of what no longer serves us, and freeing ourselves from attachment. She transferred these principles from spiritual practice into everyday life and into the relationship we have with the things we own.
Yamashita popularised the concept of Danshari in Japan, particularly after the publication of her 2009 book Danshari: The Art of Decluttering and Simplifying Your Life. But Danshari is not the same as minimalism. Its purpose is not to own as few things as possible or to live in an almost empty space, but to consciously decide what we allow into our lives, what we remove from them and, perhaps most importantly, what we have managed to detach ourselves from emotionally. In other words, what matters is not how many things we own, but the relationship we have with them.
My wardrobe still contains certain things that I cannot and do not want to get rid of because they are memories of a particular period or an important event in my life, even though I no longer wear them. And that is okay.
But clearing out our "wardrobes of life" truly matters because it relieves the mind. And this does not apply only to the rooms in our homes, but also to our professional and personal lives. Nor do we have to do everything at once - decluttering can happen one room at a time. Small steps can work wonders. That is why Danshari is not simply about tidying up - it is a profound process. By letting go of unnecessary physical possessions, we learn how to release our mental burdens as well: unhealthy relationships, old resentments, toxic obligations, and the constant need for control.
Read next: Wabi-Sabi: The Imperfect Tea Cup That Taught Me to Stop Chasing Perfection
My wardrobe will probably never look like my mother's. My imperfect signature will always remain on its shelves, along with the occasional thing I no longer wear and a memory I refuse to throw away. And that is okay. Perhaps the goal was never to have a perfectly empty and immaculate wardrobe, but to understand why we decided to keep what remains inside it.
Because the space we create by letting go of what we no longer need is not empty. It is space for what is yet to come.