Stuff and more stuff: downsizing with Marie Kondo
This is a Thing, I guess:
In the [Netflix] show, Kondo acts as a tiny garbage fairy for messy people, alighting on their houses and the piles of stuff therein to share the wisdom of the “KonMari” method.
This method, which has been fairly popular for a few years thanks to Kondo’s book, is simple in theory but can be endlessly complex in practice.
You divide all the stuff in your house — all of it — into several categories, and then examine each item — all of them — to see if it sparks joy. If it does, you keep it. If it doesn’t, you thank it, as if it were a past lover, and neatly discard it.
I’m a bit stumped by that last line—do people usually thank past lovers? But I digress.
I haven’t seen the program, but I assume you don’t have to love your broom and dustpan in order to keep them. Or your can of Comet. I assume we’re talking about things like clothing or books, although I’m not sure what love’s got to do with it.
I don’t live in a huge place and I had to get rid of a lot of stuff long ago. Nevertheless, I’ve accumulated more and would always like to lighten the load a bit. But I do that periodically anyway. I suppose a lot of people—who are not technically hoarders—with bigger homes probably have a lot more that they could jettison without feeling anything but relief:
“Tidying Up” is a gentle, soothing program. It’s not about rubbernecking at other people’s pain or shortcomings, as in a show like “Hoarders.” Kondo doesn’t judge her subjects for filling their homes with useless objects. (“I love mess!” she exclaims at one point, and you almost believe her.) In a recent BuzzFeed story, Anne Helen Petersen wrote about the condition of millennial burnout, the kind of anxious overextension that can make today’s young adults feel that even minor household chores are insurmountable. The promise of the Kondo method is that getting rid of physical clutter might clear mental and spiritual clutter as well.
There is no question that in general people these days have a great many more possessions than they did even when I was growing up, which is a long time ago but not all that long ago. For example, the closets in the very nice home in which I grew up were smaller than closets today, and we didn’t feel the least bit deprived.
How many choices of sneakers (the word we used; I’m from NY, remember) existed when I was growing up? Very, very few. That’s emblematic of the way it was.
I’ve re-done my drawers using Marie’s method. There are good reviews on You Tube. However, the show spends an awful lot of time on the self-doubt of
the principals. I would have liked to see more clean-up and organization techniques, but hey,
Judge Royce Lamberth wants the Obama administration and Clinton staffers to review some of their previous KonMari work. And answer questions about it. Very right, good news, and the re-sort could produce some excellent results in the way of cleaning house.
I’m a bit stumped by that last line—do people usually thank past lovers? But I digress.
even women dont understand women…
I confess, I find it hard to discard my past lovers. But I get nervous my wife will see one of the many, many in my drawers. It’s a problem!
Boston guy here, we call them sneakers too.
My wife and I are sort of working on downsizing, the biggest obstacle is what to do with all the stuff we’ve accumulated over the years that won’t fit in a smaller place. Some subset will be easy to jettison; holiday decorations and infrequently used cooking stuff will be a lot harder. We’ve kept a bunch of stuff from our kid’s youth, but they’ve already said they don’t want it so we can toss that too. We’ll have to make furniture decisions after we find a new place.
This is not easy!
If you get evicted often enough your stuff gets whittled down to what you can fit in the trunk of your car.
If we could only get legislators to do this with boards, commissions and laws.
I read the book about two years ago. Even though I didn’t have as much clutter as most, I find the subject fascinating.
I loved her method for dresser drawers and armoires. Love it. And her method for folding clothing. I was an instant convert to that method.
I have developed a little inventory system/program, to record what is where, and where is what. I just go by rooms, shelves, cabinets, drawers … and boxes, and boxes & sacks within boxes, in the storage shed/shop. It’s incomplete, but working on it has helped!
Still I think the core of what is outline in the Marie Kondo fairy moves the game to a new & better level. I can’t spread my object-love too thin … but I don’t want pull a sour-grapes trip on the thinnings, either.
[Thinnings, as in being taught early that you plant extra seeds in the row, and then you thin the nice, little babies to a good & healthy spacing, for success.]
I read her first book several years ago, and am glad for her that she has a tv show.
However, I found a lot of her advice on categories of things to jettison were conditioned by her lack (at the time; her new books may have a different POV) of a spouse, children, and significant keepsakes from ancestors. I don’t think she had a pet either.
She also had a very cavalier attitude toward discarding financial and legal papers (although I’m sure I can dispose of more than I do).
Her Wikipedia entry quotes this epiphany:
“Kondo says that she has been interested in organizing since childhood.[4] In junior school, Kondo ran into the classroom to tidy up bookshelves while her classmates were playing in physical education class. Whenever there was nomination for class roles, she did not seek to be the class representative or the pet feeder. Instead, she yearned to be the bookshelf manager to continue to tidy up books. She said she experienced a breakthrough in organizing one day, “I was obsessed with what I could throw away. One day, I had a kind of nervous breakdown and fainted. I was unconscious for two hours. When I came to, I heard a mysterious voice, like some god of tidying telling me to look at my things more closely. And I realized my mistake: I was only looking for things to throw out. What I should be doing is finding the things I want to keep. Identifying the things that make you happy: that is the work of tidying.”[6]
She spent five years as an attendant maiden at a Shinto shrine.[6] She founded her organizing consulting business when she was 19 and a sociology student at Tokyo Woman’s Christian University.[7]”
“—do people usually thank past lovers?”
Sure, they do, if they are mature adults. But, maybe not right away… 🙂
I purchased her book in its manga (comic) version just last month. The method is amazingly simply. I do think the “thanking” the discarded items is a cultural difference, since Marie Kondo is Japanese.
The show itself is underwhelming because quickly it becomes repetitive in a very non-creative way; but the producers went all out on the whole “diversity & inclusivity” when casting the couples.
An online friend said, ‘Oh, that woman that gets people to pay her money for what you mother told you for free: clean up your room!’
Nowadays semi-disposable shirts are so cheap that they’re vendor giveaways.
If you work in various industries, you have a near-infinite supply of workout shirts of sufficient quality to last several years.
It’s recently gotten the point that they’re giving away novelty dress socks too, so now I have too many of them as well.
Throw out what doesn’t bring me joy? Like the vacuum cleaner and the dust mop? And all the other cleaning supplies and tools? And my unpaid bills and the jury summons? My old textbooks might not bring me joy but I occasionally need one of them. How about various digestive remedies I sometimes need? No joy there, just need. Dictionary? Spare trash bags?
This ‘expert’ clearly does not live in our world.
And anyone who would ‘tidy up’ someone else’s shelves needs to learn a thing or two about boundaries.
Mark – you are totally correct; I suspect Marie shoves all those useful but not joyful things in a closet and ignores them, just like the rest of us do.
However, if you are a dedicated Home Maintenance Expert (aka wives & moms & few menfolk), you can actually take some pleasure in having the best equipment, or at least the kinds that suit you, and manufacturers are making a lot more Designer Mops etc these days.
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Phillipa Crawford on January 17, 2019 at 9:14 am at 9:14 am said:
An online friend said, ‘Oh, that woman that gets people to pay her money for what you mother told you for free: clean up your room!’
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I’ve been known to utter the same type of response to the cooking, nanny, and hoarder shows.
Maybe if we charged our kids $1000 – a – minute for our advice..
@ Mark:
“Throw out what doesn’t bring me joy? Like the vacuum cleaner and the dust mop? And all the other cleaning supplies and tools?
If you have unused multiple vacuums and dust mops then, yes. Cleaning supplies and tools would still need to be organized. Mainly the “spark joy” part is used for clothing, accessories and sentimental items.
“And my unpaid bills and the jury summons? My old textbooks might not bring me joy but I occasionally need one of them. How about various digestive remedies I sometimes need? No joy there, just need. Dictionary? Spare trash bags?””
Unpaid paid bills need to be paid, so no. If you are aware, which you aren’t, Kondo’s system also organizes papers. She never says to throwaway important documents, just documents that are no longer relevant or will not be used in the foreseeable future. If you never use the dictionary – that is never open it – then give it away. Spare trash bags are most likely to be deemed a necessary item so they go under the sink or wherever you store them, but that storage place needs to be organized as well.
“This ‘expert’ clearly does not live in our world.”
She has done an entire Netflix series helping organize houses in America, from their living room to their garages. She’s done three bedroom apartments to two story houses with two cars and multiple kids, primarily in the state of California. I suggest to watch an episode or two.
“And anyone who would ‘tidy up’ someone else’s shelves needs to learn a thing or two about boundaries.”
She doesn’t actually tidy up the place of living but simply gives her system in stages, one lesson per visit over a month or two, letting her clients do the work. In the manga version of her book she clearly states he only assists during the lesson and then leaves. The people she helps requested her service so she isn’t an un-welcomed guest.
@AesopFan: See what I wrote to Mark.