Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2019/02/14/people-who-used-marie-kondos.html
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As an undergrad Sociology major who was high most of the time, I approve these research methods, and am confident that their call for people to talk about Marie Kondo’s impact on their lives had no self-selection bias whatsoever.
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I often only “miss” things when I go through storage and find things I had forgotten about - it brings up memories, possibilities, and realization of lost opportunities, such as when I find things I rarely or never used that are now obsolete - like an unused ADB computer mouse or some such. If I’d given these things away, I’d pretty much never remember most of them to miss them.
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I think it might be difficult to find people who actually successfully decluttered the entirety of their homes, most people (myself included) I know utilize her method to clean out their closets or epic craft stashes.
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There does seem to be a lack of subject selection criteria mentioned in the article… “I recently checked in with more than a dozen people who did their first KonMari-style cleanouts in 2015, 2016, or 2017” doesn’t really tell me anything about how these people were selected for inclusion. For all I know they are the only 12 people who were ever happy with the process. Or they could be 100% representative. Dunno,
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I used to feel like crying watching the Life Laundry on BBC TV; but now I just long for access to that massive concrete mixer thing that they threw all their stuff in to on the show.
@lydi_rae “… epic craft stash”, or, “every square foot of my sisters house” as we call it.
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It’s more relevant to be selective when buying stuff, not just throwing it away after a while because you realize it gives you no joy. But then, how would Amazon survive?
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But my GURPS books! 
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I used my own tidying method years ago, and I’m happy I did. It’s called, “I Don’t Need All This Fucking Junk.” I’m considering pitching it to Netflix.
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You’ll be going head to head with my show, “Fuck This Shit!”
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Do they bring you joy to look at? I know mine do, even though I haven’t played in over a decade.
We are talking about selectively applying these techniques as well, mostly to reign in junk drawers/craft room/closets, as @lydi_rae said.
I have so much stuff that I haven’t seen since we last moved, and it’s dumb. It makes me feel like this:
And I’m tired of feeling like that. I also don’t want to leave a huge mess for my kids to have to sort out.
But I’m keeping my art supplies, games, movies, and many of my books.
Basically, I want to keep the stuff that I’ll find most useful if/when I lose my job. Stuff I haven’t read yet, or supplies I could use to make art when I finally find myself with a surplus of time.
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I bought Kondo’s book a while back.
But, alas, it brought me no joy.
So I threw it away.
I am much happier now.
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I agree the key to using her technique is to use it selectively. Feeling like you have to winnow or cull a collection that’s part of a hobby or activity near and dear to you is not a route to freeing yourself from clutter, it’s a route to destroying your soul.
For instance, we both love books and reading and have over a thousand paper books and far more e-books. Picking up each one and seeing if it makes us happy is a stupid waste of time. The collection as a whole makes us very happy, so we keep it. Other things, OTOH, not so much… so we cull whenever it seems like the crap is starting to get out of hand. Fortunately we aren’t hoarders of anything other than books, so we don’t need a self-help book to tell us how to cull unwanted stuff from our life.
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I have tons and tons of books, many of which I loved. In that mix are literally hundreds of books that were mediocre at best, and I should get rid of them. Sadly, any attempt to winnow my bookshelf usually ends with me on the couch rereading the Patrick Obrien series or wandering through Mirkwood with Bilbo and the dwarves. That does inspire joy, but the dreck ends up still on the shelf.
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This morning I was looking at the books on my shelf in our bedroom, thinking, “I could really winnow this down. I don’t need that… but that’s good. I still haven’t read that. Hmmm.”
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I would throw a lot of my stuff out. I would have done it years ago and I would be doing it monthly…if I could just find the goddamn time or energy. I barely have enough for all of the activity necessary for simply getting through the day. Can you Kondo fatigue?
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I also have to say that for some collections of mine, like clothes and outdoor gear, it’s not that I want fewer things; I just want different, newer things. I’m such a miser. I’ve spent years waiting for the right used, but lightly worn, puffer jacket to show up to replace the tattered and stained pos I wear everyday in the winter. Many things I own don’t spark joy, but they are all I have. I would swap before I would throw out.
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Every so often we do a cull of the books, mainly to keep the bookshelves from exploding (there’s no room in the house for more bookshelves or we’d be going that route). We don’t have your problem, probably because we tackle it as a team effort which keeps us focused on the goal.
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