The KonMari method

[7Wannabe5]

@EdithKeeler:

I had a similar experience. I was down to extreme minimalist state as documented in my journal, and I had to do last day of school before holiday break party for the 8 year old group of mostly Muslim-heritage children I had been teaching for 6 weeks. So, I bought some red and white yarn and taught them how to make pom-poms, and I bought some cookies because I was still camped out with a friend whose kitchen is a disaster. After the party, I found that I didn't want to give away the leftover yarn, and I did want to have my own kitchen again.

[Ego]

If you need more clutter in your life you can now buy it on Marie Kondo's website



https://shop.konmari.com/

[C40]

I hope that someday a person like @Ego will be famous. You are kind of famous, with that commercial being made about you and all, but I mean Marie Kondo level famous

We're on a progression. Maybe?

Today, it's this nice lady who brags about how much she has people send to the landfill. ***

Maybe some day we will get to having someone famous who brags about showing people how to find/use/re-home nice things when they are near the end of their journey towards the landfil... how to live flexibly and creatively... and so on..


*** This kind of "help" is often much worse than doing nothing at all. I've seen it happen with my friend who buys way too many clothes thinking it will make her happy. She fills up multiple closets. Every now and then she pulls out a bunch of clothes and takes them to sell for pennies on the dollar or just give away, thinking she's doing the right thing to help herself financially. A few weeks later she gets stressed out, blows a bunch of money, and her closet is stuffed full again. Staying at a "full" state is much better than a binge and purge habit. She does the same thing with products in her bathroom (I once counted and she had over 70 products for use in her shower), with wine and champagne, with vegetables and fruit, and so on..

[EdithKeeler]

I saw a piece on this this morning and was like “ the woman who told you to get rid of your crap is selling you more crap?” I guess HER crap sparks joy, other people’s crap doesn’t.

When I see stuff like this, and more about the Kardasshians in the news, it just makes me want to go live in the Unibomber shed in the woods with no phone, internet, etc. Just my dogs and a giant pile of novels.

[EdithKeeler]

By the way, my favorite thing on her website is a “shiatsu stick.” It’s literally A WOODEN STICK. For $12. And it’s SOLD OUT.

Damn. I’ll take my penknife for an afternoon walk into the woods and will come out a millionaire!

[7Wannabe5]

Damn. I’ll take my penknife for an afternoon walk into the woods and will come out a millionaire!

lol- I had the same thought when I saw that people were selling bags of pine cones on e-bay.

Maybe some day we will get to having someone famous who brags about showing people how to find/use/re-home nice things when they are near the end of their journey towards the landfil... how to live flexibly and creatively... and so on..

I guess you would have to ask "How can this be rendered useful or beautiful?" in reference to every thing you consider. The "problem" with this algorithm, which is also functionally necessary part of scavenger algorithm, is that you must also include time "boxes and bags" in your sorting in the form of established routines and/or specific scheduled tasks. For instance, you pick up ratty old t-shirt which no longer fits you. You answer "Could be rendered useful as rag." and "Could be rendered beautiful as part of rag rug." Then you have to ask yourself whether or not you already have a 3 year supply of rags in your rag bag and whether you are willing to commit to 2 hours/week of rag rug crafting on your calendar right now. If you are full up on rags and not interested in crafting, then you might next consider whether anybody in your social circle might appreciate some rags. Finally, you might consider whether the t-shirt could serve as biodegradable mulch in some part of your garden.

However, it is very difficult to be this disciplined and organized.

Obviously, this process can also be applied to stuff that is usually reflexively "trashed" rather than hoarded. For simple instance, when you use bones and trimmings to make broth.

[jacob]

lol- I had the same thought when I saw that people were selling bags of pine cones on e-bay.

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R ... ilet+rolls

[7Wannabe5]

@jacob:

Might be well worth the price on any occasion you happen to have an excess of glitter and glue on hand and 28 6 year old children to keep occupied.

[Mister Imperceptible]

When I see stuff like this, and more about the Kardasshians in the news, it just makes me want to go live in the Unibomber shed in the woods with no phone, internet, etc. Just my dogs and a giant pile of novels.

[Ego]

Maybe some day we will get to having someone famous who brags about showing people how to find/use/re-home nice things when they are near the end of their journey towards the landfil... how to live flexibly and creatively... and so on..

Mighty kind of you. I sure wish I could do this with the same consistency I'd want to see from a person in MK's position. Like her I am selling a lot of stuff online. While I try to stick to practical second-hand stuff, I've sold enough high end facial lotions in the past week to make me a little embarrassed of the fact that I mocked her crystals.

[jacob]

I think for many KonMari ppl, it's more about the emotional aesthetics ("spark joy") than e.g. "37 things", asceticism, carry-on traveling, [voluntary] simplicity, frugality, or other frameworks. I liken it to how the Zero-Waste movement also seems to be primarily driven by aesthetics with people buying expensive stuff that seems to make no sense from a total resource waste perspective but nevertheless looks/feels goods.

It's just another angle that is very far away from the frugal angle ... hence the difficulty in relating to the idea of filling 3" of 38mm copper tubing (10ft for $50) with soy wax, putting a $1.49 end cap on it, and selling it as a $86 candle.

[jacob]

In a sense I do. I strive to make things break even when possible. Inflows=outflows.

In the particular case of toilet paper, I did collect a box of used rolls (took 6 months) ... but ultimately decided to feed it to the compost worms instead of making $2 and risking a bad review from some buyer who didn't know what "used" meant.

[EdithKeeler]

Used toilet paper rolls are great for starting seeds for transplantation. Just sayin.

[horsewoman]

What I want to know is, if you sell the toilet paper rolls, do you go back in your expenses history and decrease the profit from the price you paid on the toilet paper? It's important to keep your savings rate score high, you know :-p

Bigato, you are killing me here. Can't stop laughing!

[jacob]

@EK - I respectfully disagree ... or rather, tried that ... didn't work well. Prob. due to personal incompetence. Thumbs are rather black.

[EdithKeeler]

@jacob: it’s that cheap tp you’re buying! I confess: I only did it once, but it worked ok.

[ertyu]

I think MK is being misunderstood in the West. It is not an organizational system. It is a life-design system. The book starts with advice to deliberately connect to the sort of life you want to live. Feel its "vibe" and make it alive in you. Then each of your belongings is assessed for congruence with that life. That's what "sparks joy" entails.

I think the decluttering strategies Jacob describes on the blog are an application of Konmari. E.g.: Start with the vision of life you want: unencumbered by belongings, so one is not a slave to having to store and move them. Buy such things that can be re-sold. Values: frugality and flexibility. Then assess belongings, both current and future, for congruence with those values.

Jacob gives more concrete recommendations because the values are defined, now we develop strategies and tactics. MK, on the other hand, allows that different people would have different organizing life-values. So she is by necessity more general. She makes no prescriptions to number of units etc., just insists that however many items you choose to be surrounded with, make sure these are congruent with the kind of life you want to lead. That way they can serve as anchors and reminders of that life, and not as millstones that keep you back for irrational reasons (guilt, obligation, sunk cost, etc).

Her concrete recommendations align with what her readers have in common: limited space, thence her folding etc. techniques, and The desire to have that space feel more airy and open. The imbuing with spirit shinto thing is NLP: objects serve as anchors for emotional states. Come back home, symbolically take objects out of bag, arrange. Objects are now "relaxed" and "happy" - metaphorically you unload the stress of the working day through the ritual. Ditto with "the socks are rested and not tangled" - she associated tangledness with tension, being folded in a nice orderly way with calmness, order, and harmony.

It's simply a book about having a mindful relationship with one's surroundings, whatever they may be. All else is incidental.

[Salathor]

I agree with Ertyu here. I watched Marie Kondo's show on NF (I recommend one episode; I think that's enough. Personally, I liked the one with the guy with like 200 pairs of shoes) and never thought she was a frugalist or advocating frugality. Looking at the interviews she did, I saw immediately the japanese love of excessively expensive, subtle design. Everything on that site looks like EXACTLY the kind of thing I would expect to see on a tray on a coffee table. Not to say I'll buy any of that, but I don't think it's off-brand for her.

[ertyu]

Watched the first episode of the first season of her show, a couple with two small kids. Holy crap these guys' house is packed with junk. If anyone's watched it, would you guys say this is a typical middle class house in the States? Or are these guys messier than normal and that's how they got selected for the show?

[Lillailler]

Yes. From a low-cost-living point of view, KonMari is operating at the wrong end of the process. The decision point 'sparks joy' versus 'adds to clutter' should come before buying something, not afterwards. It should also be taken in the context of a longish timeframe, not just 5 seconds. But there is a lot to be said for only having good 'stuff' around you, and selling / dumping the rest is really only recognising that you have made some bad buying decisions in the past, or even that things sometimes outlive their joyfulness. Hanging onto those things is an example of the sunk cost fallacy.