I’m no fan of minimalism. It’s an aesthetic-turned-lifestyle for people who never have to worry about running out of anything and who can live entirely in the present. I don’t like the look and feel of a bare space.
However, I always thought the backlash against Marie Kondo felt a little strange. It’s not something that will work for me, but it might be something that works for other people. Her thoughts on books in particular are not something I agree with, but no one is making you follow her advice, so I didn’t really understand why people got so incredibly mad about it.
So I thought I would check out the book. I went into it knowing that it was going to be talking about a lot of things that weren’t going to be compatible with my lifestyle and with the feeling that there were going to be some strange translations that might sensationalize what the actual teachings are, because that’s how you reach an American audience. I figured there might be a few things in there that I could take an incorporate into my own life. You never know, right?
And here’s the thing. After reading it, I don’t like Marie Kondo as a person.
The lessons and technique is fine. If you’ve never done a mass declutter before, or you want to try something new, this technique seems like a good one to get you started on that initial pass. If you want to try out minimalism, this is good. Keep only that which makes you happy or which is immediately useful. Get rid of anything from the past or for the future that you even think about putting into a maybe pile. That’s all fine. It might be good for some people. It was a meme for a reason, after all.
My problem with her, and this may be a translation thing, is that she has a much greater respect for objects than people. Every object is greeted, considered, and thanked, whether it’s the house or the things being tossed. There is an emphasis at points of allowing the objects to rest and recover from being used, whether that’s in how you store socks or her insistence that you should unpack your bag at the end of every day and repack it in the morning.
People on the other hand… It feels like every human is a child in the midst of a tantrum that she is patiently waiting out. She threw out someone’s coat when he didn’t put it away and he was mad when he found out, but soon after he started tidying so clearly he didn’t care about it. Put things where they belong and not where you use them, you just need to stop being lazy and go to get it and put it back every time. You will never read that TBR pile or use those unused notebooks, so you should not keep them. If you aren’t constantly looking at those old photos, you don’t really value them enough to keep.
I will give it that this may be a translation issue, but I really don’t think so. It sounds too much like my own Asian mother after she would clean my room and throw out the majority of my stuff.1
If you’ve never done a declutter before, this is probably good for a starting point. The advice in the book is fine. But for me, I was surprised to find that I really do not like the author herself. Which, given my track record with advice books, probably shouldn’t surprise me that much.
- I never got tidier, I just got a whole lot better at hiding stuff [↩]