the life-changing magic of tidying up

i read this, and did it. i took a few months to really do it, and if you add up all the steps to the very end it took me about a year. i got rid of and replaced some furniture, which takes a while. and i just looked thru a box of personal childhood stuff only recently.

if you skip all of the stories of her clients going thru it and distill the steps of the process you could fit the real meat of the book on a notecard.

i'm really glad i did it. biggest impacts are probably on the wardrobe and the kitchen -- i didn't think i had much stuff, but of course i had a piles of clothes i didn't like and grubby old tools & utensils i didn't use.

i wasn't quite as ruthless as she insists when it came to my books, but i did offload about half of them (adios college) and got rid of no cds. honestly the step dealing with miscellaneous paperwork was probably the most painful.

the book is a funny read for its mix of whimsical touchyfeelyness -- "everything should bring you joy" -- and utter severity -- "keepsakes of the past are useless trash, if your family doesn't like you doing this, lie to them"

i wonder if 2nd-hand shops are seeing a weird glut, the book is enough of a phenomenon that it's inspiring some backlashy thinkpieces; "stop cluttershaming me!" etc

like, i just wanted to take stock of what i really owned in life and have an apartment that i enjoyed being in, not reach some shintoist level of immanence or w/e

of all the people I can think of, I would trust goole to be able to accomplish this

I think my coworker, who is kind of all over the place unless she's concentrating on a specific task, probably shocked her family by getting rid of everything in their house over a long weekend

distill the steps of the process you could fit the real meat of the book on a notecard.

please distill for us

throw out everything

i think that the backlash pieces are really dumb. she doesn't cluttershame - she's just really focussed on how you're probably hanging on to shit that is causing anxiety. if you actually like all your clutter and it makes you happy, she's not against that. but she gives you permission to throw out shit you're only holding onto out of guilt. and the idea is to get rid of all the bad shit so your life in your home is more enjoyable.

eg the paperwork thing - she talks about how we keep way too much unnecessary paper and with her system, once you've gotten rid of the excess, it promotes keeping that paper to a minimum, i.e. you keep all your important papers together, but they're so minimal that it's easy to find what you need when you need it but also each time you go to find something, you're forced to look through what you have and discard expired stuff (like warrantees etc)

eg gifts - she talks about how you don't have to hang onto gifts just bc they're gifts, you should look at the gift, appreciate the intent of the giver, and then if it's something that doesn't 'spark joy', you discard it.

even tho i haven't actually done this yet (i haven't had, and still don't have, the mental energy to do this yet), i've packed up my life and thrown away or given away 95% of my shit 3 x in my life, and never regretted anything i've gotten rid of.

i also really appreciate that she doesn't really care about types of storage or organization - sure, she recommends ways to store things better (the clothes rolling for example) but she doesn't have you meticulously organizing shit or buying special storage systems. all you need to do is find a place for everything and make sure things go back to their place every time they're removed. once you have a place for everything, the idea is that when a new item enters your home, you have decide whether it has a place or if you should discard it.

she's about a million times more reasonable on life advice than alain de botton

all pro kondo people otm

justine otm

once you have a place for everything, the idea is that when a new item enters your home, you have decide whether it has a place or if you should discard it.

I just started doing something like this with clothing. When I get a new thing that goes in the closet, I will remove an old thing that I don't wear. However, the old thing goes into one of the to-be-altered/refashioned bins under my sewing table ... it does bring me joy thinking how I could alter/refashion said item ... I am probably "doing it wrong"

lol on another site some dude was asking "how do I tell people I know that owning too much stuff is bad?!"

made me realize "too much stuff" is kind of a self-defeating phrase. how much is too much? how little is too little? what is clutter, really

clutter is the box of every TV Guide magazine from 1985 that I collected at the time because at the age of 10 I had the idea to write some insightful essay about the contents of TV Guide magazine, and this box has sat in my parents garage for almost 30 years. (Though I think they finally got rid of it in the past few months)

as a child, marie kondo used to steal stuff from her parents and siblings that she felt they didn't need and throw them away

my sister, before she could talk, was grabbing my toys and hiding them under her bed. my parents couldn't believe my claims that she was taking my toys until they cleaned under the bed.

this is why marie kondo and i will never get along

does your sister still do this?

you know, she dropped by to feed the cat at my place while I was out of town. should probably go to her house and check.

Far from apologizing for discarding their things without permission, I would retort, "I threw it out for you because you were incapable of doing it yourself."

i got the book to learn the life changing magic of tidying up but instead of changing my life i just ended up really enjoying reading about the author's eccentricities. in some ways it was hard to relate to her because i am a slob (something i hate about myself) but in other ways it was easy because she is also a weirdo.

For myself, I especially hate the idea of turning stuff into family heirlooms which then must be handed down across generations and kept safe by each successive owner so it can be passed along at death. It doesn't matter how small it is or how seemingly 'valuable' or emblematic of family history. If it has no place of its own and no real value to the present owner, it has lost its privileged aura and should be let go of as lightly and easily as if it were an empty cardboard box. Give it away within the family if you can, but if nobody else in the family wants it, ditch it without guilt.

For example, in about 1930 my grandfather, as newly minted associate professor who'd grown up as a poor farm boy in ragged overalls, bought a deluxe calfskin-bound Eleventh Edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica in its own custom bookcase. It was the supreme emblem of his rise in the world. It stood proudly in his living room in every place he dwelt. My mom knew how precious it was to him and took it in at his death. She passed it on to me, because I was the only child willing to take it. I did it to please her. Recently, I gave it to Goodwill. It had lost its purpose.

imo the purpose was to sell that sucker to a collector and have a nice meal celebrating granddad

you'll be sorry once this internet fad is over and you can't look up anything

have you lately tried selling an old encyclopedia and bookcase that stands about five feet high by three feet wide by a foot deep and weighs approx. 100 lbs.? Even if I got a nibble over the internet, shipping that monster would have been a huge headache.

that's why I said "a nice meal" and not the $4k somebody is trying to charge on ebay

eh heirlooms matter (to me, anyway) but yeah it depends what they are. About the only thing I have of my grandfather's posessions is one of these: https://images.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fmedia-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2Fbd%2F73%2F2d%2Fbd732d30a8de0545d357a00713a9e286.jpg&f=1 Still works! So in an emergency I can listen to Xtian nutjobs on AM radio. And I have some small statues + a painting from my grandmother. These things are small and/or decorative so no big deal.

oops sorry lol hueg

once you have a place for everything, the idea is that when a new item enters your home, you have decide whether it has a place or if you should discard it.

this is basically my philosophy. I hate having stuff for stuff's sake. As a result I hardly have anything decorative or any furniture as I'm building that up and take bloody ages to painstakingly choose each piece. It's partly a result of moving countries and cities so often and wanting to buy stuff I know I'll want to keep for ages rather than replace it all the time. But my house seems a bit bare until such time as I can swan around buying delightful objets d'art...

certain members of my family equate quantity with quality so always buys me loads of *stuff*. I enjoy permitting myself to pass it on.

but, you say that these items have value to you and a place in your life, which passes the threshold test for keeping them.

if you actually like all your clutter and it makes you happy, she's not against that. but she gives you permission to throw out shit you're only holding onto out of guilt. and the idea is to get rid of all the bad shit so your life in your home is more enjoyable.

I am starting this process! I've lived in the same apartment for 20 years this November, so part of this is coming to terms that I am no longer in my 20s and that my interests and activities have changed, maybe not drastically, but significantly. So, it's less about holding onto things because of guilt, and more about holding onto things out of fear -- fear of change, fear of getting "old."

I think it's going to take multiple passes through various categories of things. The trick for me, so far, has been physically removing the things I'm getting rid of. For the most part, these are things that other people would like and could use. Also, there's a mental back and forth of "do I try to sell this or do I just donate it?"

This article is kind of amazing

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/boomers-unwanted-inheritance/2015/03/27/0e75ff6e-45c4-11e4-b437-1a7368204804_story.html?utm_term=.a53f93c8b4e5

in the way it effortlessly pivots from "millennials and their rigorously minimal lifestyle rejecting suburban parental furniture" to "white people making money off regional Mexican cuisine"

does it go into the role of stairs and buildings without elevators in terms of the appeal of various pieces of furniture?

62 percent of millennials prefer to live in the type of mixed-use communities found in urban centers where they can live near shopping, restaurants and work. And 40 percent say they would want to live there in the future.

lord

sorry kneejerk reaction to "mixed-use." it's normal to want to live near shopping & work.

hahah yeah, "mixed-use" is pretty much code for luxury apartment/condo complexes that gentrify cities

To make matters worse, young adults don’t seem to want their own college textbooks, sports trophies or T-shirt collections, still entombed in plastic containers at their parents’ homes.

so many gems in this article

there's a mental back and forth of "do I try to sell this or do I just donate it?"

― sarahell, Saturday, May 13, 2017 10:32 PM (three weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

boy don't i know this, we have an eternal "garage sale" pile in a closet that we keep adding to. actually this is sort of why i still have as many records as i do as well, the eternal "do i trade 5 records in at amoeba to get one i really want, or do i spend time trying to sell them on eBay?"

I'm a terrible person, but when I do this type of cleaning up I only have two piles, keep and put in the alley. Donation/selling too much effort.

Love me some KonMari

xp - do you not have people in your neighborhood on nextdoor or everyblock that regularly complain about their neighbors putting stuff out to give away and causing blight?

Not really, the scavengers swoop down pretty quickly and pick stuff up. Part of the reason I don't feel so bad about it.

xp nomar - the used book store I like is great, because they also take donations to Prison Libraries, so the stuff they don't buy, you can just put them in the Prison Library donation area, for your decluttering convenience.

dosughsfkuhsfgo'husgfouhsf

This thread basically covers almost everything we went over on the netflix thread. Ha.

well of course it does

If it no longer brings you joy, you should delete the bookmark.

ilx ouroboros

thank you thread and goodbye

I love this show. I liked the book too.

I am surprised we have an I love home.

i stopped watching the first episode because i hated the reality dad so much

My otherwise-lovely grandma burned lots of my favourite stuff on a bonfire when I was about 6.
My father-in-law, who threw out my wife's notebooks full of notes about films and my children's soft toys because he thought them "useless," and who seems to own about 5-10 books in total, always says we have "too much stuff!"

Just hearing about this book / TV series over the last couple of weeks is basically giving me palpitations, and I'm going to find any way I can to mute it from everywhere I go.