WOMEN accumulate more clothes than they will fit into or need in a lifetime. Men hoard gadgets, devices, and tools until there’s no space left in the garage for their car. Children outgrow their toys but keep getting new ones. Old people have too many memories, therefore mementos, that will surely outlive them.
That, basically, explains why Marie Kondo – she had to be Japanese! – has become a household word since her show on Netflix unleashed a storm of wishful thinking about whether to toss and trash or keep and cherish. The magic words are “spark of joy.” When you hold an old ratty garment or an almost forgotten souvenir in your hands, what does it tell you? If it evokes warm, pleasant feelings and kindles a joyous spark, don’t throw it away, you’re allowed by the KonMari method to hang on to it.
She compartmentalizes the work of tidying into clothes, kitchen and bathroom things, collections, sentimental keepsakes, but overall the philosophy is to reduce STUFF in order to create space and, just as importantly, to elevate the exercise into a ritual. When she enters a client’s house for the first time – the first few episodes are set in California – she and the homeowners drop to their knees to say “thank you.” Before dumping their throwaways in a sack, the owners touch each object to bid it a gentle goodbye. Bonus: Success after weeks of tidying is also measured in terms of improved relations in the home.
When I said Marie Kondo had to be Japanese, I meant that the Japanese are almost ritualistic in observing cleanliness and neatness. Their simple houses, built to inflict the least damage from earthquakes, force them to live neat and tidy, sparing in the amount of STUFF that other civilizations equate with status. Among Chinese practitioners of feng shui, the second commandment has to do with removing clutter and junk, in the belief that these produce dead energy like that emitted by wilted flowers.
It’s not a ritual, but when my children were in their single-digit years and told to donate their old clothes for typhoon victims, they would much rather give up their new or slightly used shirts than sacrifice a soft, well worn garment that had meant something to them, whatever that something was. If it was not a spark of joy in the KonMari sense, what was it?
