When I used to go to my grandmother’s trailer in Michigan, I remember turning my body sideways to get past the tall stacks of things — magazines, toys, hair products, clothes. To open the windows required that I first break through the thick layers of dirt that kept them sealed tight. On those summer visits, my sister and I spent a lot of time outside or squished into the bunk beds that hadn’t yet been buried under my grandmother’s belongings. She would take us to flea markets, where she compulsively pulled items into her basket with barely a glance: sea monkeys, craft necklaces, old books, homemade jellies…

I don’t remember when I first understood that my grandmother was a hoarder. In my naïveté, I wasn’t so much concerned about her collecting as I was genuinely amazed: How cool was it that my grandmother had boxes of unopened toys hidden around her home? The trailer I visited when I was little was was just one of her three properties, the largest of which is my mother’s childhood home. But that house was, and remains, off-limits. My grandmother doesn’t let us come to see her at all anymore. She never offers an explanation, just an unshakeable "no."

In the years when I approached adulthood, when I could finally begin to understand the effect she had on my mother, I began to hate my grandmother. I hated her for turning away my mom’s help, for making my mom cry when she felt helpless. I hated that she ignored phone calls and missed birthdays. I hated that my friends had such sweet grandmothers — grandmothers who visited and doted. And then, when I got my own apartment in college, I hated her because I was starting to become just like her: a hoarder.

Clothes were the hardest part for me. Everything I saw on sale that looked like it might fit me got tossed into my cart, and every paycheck meant a new online order of hundreds of dollars. I worked from early morning until late in the evening, but I never managed to set up a savings account. I bought books I never read, notebooks I never wrote in, and movies I never watched. It always left me with a sick pit in my stomach when I binged on these things, but not buying them was worse. It wasn’t that I wanted them, it was that I needed them.

Along with the hoarding came my grandmother’s hereditary tolerance of filth. In my last apartment, I once pulled out a bulletin board that I had shoved behind the couch. It was so matted with hair that I could peel it off in strips, like fabric. Do you hate hair? I hate hair, and I hate that the thick clump of hair is still seared in my memory. I also hate dust and mold. In principle, I hate clutter, and having too many things. Yet here I was, surrounded by all of it. Drowning in it.

It was by chance that my friend Megan sent me a link to an article praising Marie Kondo’s The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the enormously popular book on — you guessed it — tidying up, as told by Japan’s Queen of Decluttering. “Isn’t this crazy?” Megan asked. A day later, she sent me another link: a critique of the book, where one woman condemned Kondo’s methods as a bunch of malarkey. “She tells you to throw away all of your photos,” Megan said, disbelief in her Gchat. I agreed: crazy, it was crazy.

But two days after that, I bought it.