BY PIETA WOOLLEY | pieta@rliving.ca
Marie Kondo is amazing. But the Japanese tidying magnate doesn’t understand North Americans.
So says Ranka Burzan, who moved to Powell River late in 2018, and brought her thriving home organization business, Solutions Organizing Simple, or S.O.S., with her from Vancouver.
In the 16 years Ranka has entered other people’s homes to help them sort their stuff, she has seen it all. Middle-aged people drowning in their deceased parents’ antiques. Otherwise well-raised children incapable of cleaning their own rooms. Highly-educated and successful adults who simply cannot make decisions about their stuff. And families so attached to the chaos of mess, that the Province threatens to remove their children.
These are not extreme examples, Ranka says. Rather, they’re everyday manifestations of the psychological challenges of North American life.
“Keeping clutter can be about a fear of being poor,” says Ranka, who fled the former Yugoslavia as a teen, and deeply understands the anxiety behind many immigration stories. “It can come from difficult relationships with the relatives who died and left you their things. Or trauma from wars you’ve escaped in other countries. Or just a simple fear of change. Plus, here in North America, we just have so much space in our homes, much more than in other countries. And we are so emotionally attached to our stuff – it represents status.
“You can help someone clean up, but unless you help them work through their attachment to clutter, their house will be full again the next week.”
Now, Ranka’s business is right on trend. Marie Kondo has a popular new reality series on Netflix helping American families and has authored several internationally-bestselling books over the last four years. Powell River’s chief librarian, Rebecca Burbank, says tidying and cleaning books are flying off the shelves in Crossroads Village (see sidebar) – including the provocatively-titled 2018 tome, The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning: How to Free Yourself and Your Family from a Lifetime of Clutter. And, of course, as the local population ages and passes on, younger families are absorbing the accumulated clutter of the War Generation and Baby Boomers.
Every mess has its own unique story, says Ranka. In a coffee shop interview, she is decked out in the tidiest of outfits: black and white checked jacket, orange blouse, bold silver necklace, and trendy eyeglasses. Decluttering is fundamentally about mental and emotional transformation, she says, and about reclaiming power.
She uses herself as an example. Raised in poverty – surrounded by war-related dysfunction and profoundly vision-impaired – Ranka left the former Yugoslavia for Austria, and finally Canada. Hanging over her head was the social expectation that she would never amount to much, that she would be a “nuisance to society.” While she was never that – in Surrey, she became a successful early childhood educator – the chaos of her own childhood infected every part of her adulthood. It wasn’t until her 50s that she gathered the strength to say, “enough.” That’s when she left her marriage, and started S.O.S.
“Everything I see is because I experienced it. I had a fear of change. So I wanted the chaos. I became an expert at dealing with my chaos,” she says. “Decluttering is not just about putting your stuff in pretty baskets or containers. I go deeper. As soon as we find the reason for all this clutter, we can find the solution to it. But I can’t work with people who are not ready to go there.”
Why part with your stuff? The benefits, says Ranka. Less stress, more leisure time with your family and friends, a healthier relationship with your family, a better social life and improved financial security. It’s not about attaining a Better Homes and Gardens-worthy home. Rather, Ranka says, she’s passionate about her work because evolving out of her own chaos was so powerful for her, she wants to share that with the world.
“I made a decision to study the roots of disorganization, procrastination and how to improve my quality of life,” she says. “It became my passion and purpose to help others to live an inspired and productive life.”
CHILDREN NEED CHORES
Ranka has noticed that many families spend their afternoons and evenings driving children around to activities, rather than mentoring them in managing the household.
The intention is good, but she is concerned that essential skills and relationships are being lost.
“True confidence comes from children being able to make a contribution to the household,” she says. “Order pizza, hold a family meeting and assign chores.”
