the life-changing magic of tidying up

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.

Despite my contempt for these kinds of "oh finally this is the key to life" things which are really about the futility of consumer culture, I was forced into this scenario by separating from my wife, living in a minuscule apartment, taking only things for which my need outweighed my reluctance to further upset my wife, and duplicate purchasing those things which were essential to us both. Apart from stuff which was just plainly mine (largely ceremonial guitar collection) I have ended up living with about 1/4 as many things and pretty fine with that. The mental clarity, however, I ascribe to leaving an unhappy environment and near constant anxiety and anger. I wonder how many of the people doing this are using it as a displacement activity to avoid addressing what's really wrong.
Jeeze I really nailed the "bitter middle-aged man" vibe there it seems. ACHIEVEMENT UNLOCKED.

I wonder how many of the people doing this are using it as a displacement activity to avoid addressing what's really wrong.

board description

close to the bone for me!

that describes like 80% of everything that everyone does

otm

tbf the show does address that thought - that by tidying up, you can actually move onto confronting your problems rather than avoiding it through clutter

and i can believe it somewhat - letting your home become a sprawling, unknownable mess is a pretty good metaphor

https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/3ydn2xJwzTh5NT2bGy5afw--~B/Zmk9c3RyaW07aD0zODY7cHlvZmY9MDtxPTgwO3c9NDQwO3NtPTE7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/https://media.zenfs.com/en-US/best_life_342/701376bbbee91a175b218b557f6324d3

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TPVk-m1Pr4s

kondo is great. accumulating too many possessions is bad.

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.

🖼

I watched one ep -- to me it kind of sounds like every other "life changing" thing that only changes your life for about two weeks before you start to slide. Also, fuck folding t-shirts into little nugget shapes.

Getting rid of excess stuff is good, but you need to address the in-door and not just the out-door, i.e. how to avoid buying stuff you don't need in the first place. Otherwise you're just performing routine maintenance on your excessively consumeristic life. I find that we often go through that process of "Oh, x thing is ugly and doesn't serve a purpose" but then we wind up buying y thing that we convince ourselves will make our lives better than x thing did, and it doesn't. Same happens with clothing -- getting rid of stuff I wound up not wearing doesn't prevent me from falling for the same add'l 40% off sale items "well it's not exactly the color I want" trap over and over again.

isn't the idea that between the shock-awareness of doing it all at once (and seeing what your life can be like with less clutter), and the various little moves of being aware of each little thing and whether it sparks joy etc., that you're training yourself in a more mindful way of relating to possessions?

not that that precludes any backsliding!

Otherwise you're just performing routine maintenance on your excessively consumeristic life.

what's wrong with routine maintenance?

I think the point was that it would be more lasting and sensible to reject an "excessively consumeristic life" than to merely maintain it in a way that makes it more tolerable.

I think that to do a solid job I would need a dedicated amount of space and a sustained amount of time - neither of which is likely to become available in the near future.

I can nibble around the edges for minor quality-of-life improvements. A few days ago I cleaned out a coat closet. Donated outgrown coats, pitched solo mittens, unsentimentally jettisoned maybe 15 of the 25 scarves we've accumulated (almost all gifts, btw). I have never bought a scarf; I have worn a scarf maybe three times in my life. But I have gotten a scarf for Christmas at least 10 times in 47 years.

I can pretty readily do the same to the "stupid board games with one essential part missing" shelf. (Mostly gifts.) And the art supply bins in which fully half the markers have dried out, or half-abandoned craft projects. (Mostly, you guessed it, gifts.)

Sometimes seems like it's less our own purchasing habits, and more the well-meaning grandparents/aunts/uncles at birthdays and Christmas. We try to direct them away from giving Stuff. But for some folks the idea of a huge pile of gifts under the tree is a marker of love, and I can't always head it off.

Then there are the boxes I'd really like to go through to see what's in them. I don't have space or time to lay things out on a table even long enough to sort into piles (bills to pay, personal memorabilia,concert and movie ticket stubs, work samples, kid artwork, trash, stuff that is OBE, stuff that will never matter again, stuff I will be heartbroken to lose, etc.).

We need the table because that's where we eat. I get halfway through one pile and it's dinnertime again. Where does the stuff go? Back into the box labeled something like "miscellaneous personal save, 1994-2019"

at least change the label to "half-sorted miscellaneous personal, 1994-2019"

I would actually enjoy 'tidying up" peoples spaces. But I would be the opposite of Marie Kondo and probably traumatize people about all the decisions they made in their life.

Yerac, lol. "You paid ACTUAL money to see Limp Bizkit? In two thousand FOUR?"

I would make them tell me about the show first and their favorite lyric.

Otherwise you're just performing routine maintenance on your excessively consumeristic life.

what's wrong with routine maintenance?

― sarahell, Tuesday, January 22, 2019 7:56 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I think the point was that it would be more lasting and sensible to reject an "excessively consumeristic life" than to merely maintain it in a way that makes it more tolerable.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, January 22, 2019 8:07 PM (yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Right, it's this. So many times I feel like we have gotten rid of something we "don't use" only to replace it with something else we convince ourselves will serve the same purpose better, and then we don't use that either or it's equally lacking in longevity. Purging consumer goods can easily become an integral part of consumeristic habits instead of an antidote to them--an essential part of dealing with the inflow of stuff rather than a means to a more minimalist life.

ENDING IS BETTER THAN MENDING

https://static.adweek.com/adweek.com-prod/wp-content/uploads/2017/08/ikea-lamp-hed-2017-600x315.jpg

https://www.scifi-movies.com/images/contenu/data/0004210/affiche-brave-new-world-1980-1.jpg

I appreciate that someone wrote this article. I couldn't articulate a lot of this before . I think someone mentioned on the netflix thread about her shinto mindset.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/marie-kondo-white-western-audineces_us_5c47859be4b025aa26bde77c?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000046&utm_campaign=hp_fb_pages&ir=Entertainment&utm_medium=facebook&utm_source=women_fb&fbclid=IwAR3N6HJMCDeFg9bYOTmG1howmeMOI5WV3KQnPpirnwCGJddHvlM07lpI9nQ

interesting, but it also seems absurd that that joking tweet about books required an apology

Oh, I didn't even see that. My tweet blocking powers are getting stronger and stronger.

also totally makes sense to me because the little once more religious Jewish voice in the back of my head said "that's idol worship" when I was watching it, lol

thx for that article Yerac

I think the point was that it would be more lasting and sensible to reject an "excessively consumeristic life" than to merely maintain it in a way that makes it more tolerable.

― A is for (Aimless), Tuesday, January 22, 2019 5:07 PM (yesterday)

this is kinda like my "waiting for the revolution" type anarchist friends that don't see the point of voting or getting involved in any form of activism that doesn't result in overthrowing capitalism, the patriarchy, etc.

lol what? It's nothing like that.

it kind of is because you are going to accumulate things and clutter and stuff you don't need because that is life in America, sorry.

or stuff you want for a while and then don't want -- consumerism is like gravity at this point -- sorry, this is just how I feel and also true

Buying behavior can just as much be altered as hording behavior. Of course no TV show is going to focus on not buying stuff though /trench

imo it's a trickle-down effect, by making you reconsider what you want to keep it makes you reconsider what you've been buying, and what you'll buy in the future