Japan's original decluttering guru (no, not that one)

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I must say, however, that Marie Kondo&#x27;s method does work well. I&#x27;ve used it on several occasions, and felt good about it afterwards.<p>The only thing I find it doesn&#x27;t work well with are the dozens of old SUN computers I have in my basement, because they all SPARC joy.

&gt; unnecessary items<p>Here’s the thing. I’ve got at least two family members that could probably be classified as hoarders. They keep a bunch of stuff that they really should get rid of. But at least part of this is, I believe, ingrained upon them by their relatively impoverished upbringing. They would hang onto items of marginal value because that marginal value means more when you have to scrape by.<p>Decluttering is a luxury. Rich people can throw out their rarely-used junk because it’s trivial for them to buy new stuff should the need arise. Poor people keep the “junk” because that little bit of potential residual value is a part of their livelihood.<p>Most people should put their stack of National Geographics in the recycling bin, because it isn’t worth their time to find the person who’ll give them five bucks for it. For some people, that five bucks matters.

Am I the only one to have a problem with the &quot;decluttering&quot; movement.<p>It is not that I think that clutter is a good thing, but I think that decluttering focuses on the wrong side of the problem. That is, the real problem is not with what you are keeping, it is with what you are getting. Otherwise, it just encourages over-consumption.<p>Ok, your decluttered your house, disposing of all your junk, but now what? If you continue buying junk, then clutter will come back, then you will dispose of it, again, just to buy it again later. If you are doing that, you are better off keeping your clutter, at least it will make you think twice before buying some crap.<p>And by the way, I find it particularly ironic that Marie Kondo sells a whole lot of crap on her website, as if the message was &quot;get rid of your stuff so you can put mine in its place&quot;.<p>The ideas are not bad, but I&#x27;d rather make them about the future rather than about the past. Don&#x27;t ask yourself &quot;does it spark joy&quot; at home, ask yourself &quot;will it spark joy&quot; when you are shopping. Find the right place for the stuff you intend to buy, not for what you already have.

I found moving to be a good declutterring method. It’s a definite event to clean up most things in life. The difficulties in moving will make you think twice about acquiring unnecessary stuffs once settled down.

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What she says makes sense: “It is about returning people to a state in which parting with things feels natural.”<p>That&#x27;s the whole problem, if you&#x27;re a hoarder it doesn&#x27;t feel natural. Maybe you can step through the process and declutter but unless you change your brain you&#x27;ll just re-accumulate.

I can relate to people telling me that my place is too small. It’s not that small — you just collect too much stuff.<p>My decluttering method, which goes with the idea of making it to feel okay to part with stuff, is to always have set aside space for everything. Outside of that space, I cannot take in any more items.<p>My closet has only so many hangers. If I want to buy new clothes, it must mean that I have to get rid of old ones. It helps prevent me from needlessly buying things that I don’t need and it also forces me to clean out my closet.<p>Essentially I am forced into a mostly constant state of zen regarding my belongings and I rarely have to declutter. It’s often easier to not first get into a bad habit than try to get out of one.<p>There have been occasions where I did throw away something that I needed later, but the enjoyment of having little clutter and less to clean far outweighs the rare incident of fleeting regret.

It&#x27;s funny to me that both this woman and Kondo describe their methods as &quot;The <i>Japanese</i> art of tidying.&quot; It&#x27;s funny because if these methods were so characteristically or inherently Japanese, why would so many Japanese people themselves need so much help &amp; training in the methods as to spawn a whole industry?<p>It&#x27;s like calling Golang &quot;The <i>California</i> programming language&quot; or calling Newton&#x27;s laws &quot;The <i>English</i> art of explaining inertia.&quot; Is there really anything particularly Japanese about these women&#x27;s methods or is it just Orientalist branding?<p>(You do see this sometimes around Brooklyn, or you used to, when Brooklyn&#x27;s cultural cache was especially high.)

Based on my experience of just listening convos around me, danshari is the more popular method in Japan. At least, people talk about it more.

I find it interesting that people with a lot of storage space tend to fill it with things they don’t need. My father is the king of clutter he has 500 square meters of storage filled with trash he doesn’t need. When I tell him to throw something away, he just says, “I might need it one day,” but that day never comes.

Didn&#x27;t Marie Kondo refer to his book in her book?<p>EDIT: no it was someone else she read growing up, the book:<p><pre><code> The Art of Discarding by Nagisa Tatsumi</code></pre>

What about the zen aesthetic that came with buddhism

Are there any good books one can recommend on this topic?

[stub for offtopicness]