Twenty years ago she would have been duping elderly residents in rural Japan out of their life savings with fortune telling and ancestor scams.
I read her book and it struck me as the flip-side to the same coin that harbors disorders like hoarding: a total and utter obsession with stuff. KonMari may take a more practical approach to what to keep vs. what to discard than hoarders do, but the obsession with physical things is very alive in her philosophy. I finished the book feeling very sorry for her. There was something so sad about it, this need to possess, adore, and organize inanimate objects.
There was something so sad about it, this need to possess, adore, and organize inanimate objects.
I think you have it backwards. Her approach is that if an inanimate object doesnât delight you, why possess it?
why not?
Spare parts?
[quote=âshaddack, post:6, topic:51665â]Spare parts?[/quote]I thought that was children, not inamimate objects?
Spare parts donât delight you? Freak.
They do! (Hence all the clutter.)
Both of them. Different spares for different technologies. 
I simply coexist with my inanimate object collection. I donât like people attempting to âorganiseâ it (hidying up, I call it. Bah).
One of the few heated disagreements Iâve had with my wife has been over books. She adores them, can only get rid of the truly repugnant ones, and dreams of a house with a round room that she can build bookcases into with one of those wheely ladders to get to the upper shelves. Each book, even the crap, would be rebound into matching leather spines, green for fiction, blue for non-fiction.
Donât get her started on reading on a screen instead of out of dead trees.
Me, Iâve re-read a couple books. But once Iâm done, chances are Iâm done-done. And if Iâm not, I can always find a bootleg electronic copy that I donât feel bad about reading because I paid for the book once already. Reading dead trees is a soothing experience compared to reading backlit screens. I havenât tried epaper screens yet. My objections to ereaders are their licensing models, not their technology.
So one day I suggested âMany of these books wouldnât make the cut if we were to move todayâ.
Yeah. That went well.
I agree, and found myself inspired by the follow-up to that sentiment which is that if a thing sparks joy and is meaningful to you, then you should honor it by taking care of it. I needed to hear that because I find myself holding onto things because I think they might be important, and then I store this important thing in a pile in a drawer. (This of course leads to her philosophy about storage which is that things should be stored vertically wherever possible because itâs more visible and is less stressful for the objects. (She does anthropomorphize clothes, FWIW.))
Do it. They have a limited performance in low ambient light, as the contrast is not always sufficient, but you can increase the font in such scenarios to compensate; however thatâs a rather extreme situation.
Otherwise, the reading quality is fairly comparable.
The thumbing-through speed is inferior in comparison with dead trees, and scribbling notes on margins is not so comfortable, but there is the keyword searching and portability to compensate for.
If you deal with a lot of PDF files (sci/tech books, datasheets), you may want a 9" reader. For regular ebooks, a 6" one will do a good job. Prefer those with removable SD card and those you can root.
âSparks Joy Pileâ is the name of my new J-Pop band
I wonder if sheâs ever run into trouble when dealing with a client who has clutter because they know that they have to have some stuff; but there exists no stuff which sparks joy, and so the rule of assignment either produces a logistically hopeless outcome or is never executed?
Oh I feel you. This is me PLUS a kid who ALSO wants to save every book she ever read and love it forever. Why why why do we need to keep all these books??? Thank goodness hubbie got a Kindle a few years back - hoping my daughterâs Paperwhite present this year solves some storage issues too.
There are a lot of books Iâd donate (or sell to Powells) toot-sweet, but theyâre signed, in some cases by legends of science fiction. I feel like they should be worth more than a $1.00 tax write-off or the $.50 in case Powellâs would give me.
This. Possession as the source of delight seems perverse somehow, shouldnât its utility count for something?.
Definitely.
With possible exception for rare collectibles or objects with sentimental value.
Sheâs got a nice dream, but whatâs she doing to accomplish it?
Sometimes the best way to move forward is to discard the past.
