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Marie Kondo's Advice Praised by Scientists: “Clutter Is Not a Good Thing”

171 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

ionforce 8y ago
Odd that the article includes some weird non-Kondo advice about "don't touch it", probably contrary even, given that her approach is very intimate/fluffy. I guess the overall idea is to think more objectively about something's value, using your own sense of "joy" as a proxy for that value function. For a while now I've been thinking about writing a "Marie Kondo's approach distilled for engineers"...
- ValentineC 8y ago
  > For a while now I've been thinking about writing a "Marie Kondo's approach distilled for engineers"... Please do! I've been doing my fair bit of KonMari recently, but I have a fair bit of rationalising to do with regard to getting rid of things.
- sct202 8y ago
  Yeah, from the netflix series it's more like you have to touch everything of the same category and then compare how you feel.
- mc32 8y ago
  Well, /I/ think her approach is very marketing-oriented. For example she asks whether an item sparks "joy". Joy is kind transient, very subjective, etc. But it fits within her "shtick" and it works. For me, I'd ask whether it provides utility, but that sounds very boring and isn't a term which would fit well in marketing.
  - eli 8y ago
    Do sentimental items provide utility? Only if you define utility in a way that includes "owning this makes me feel particularly good even though the object itself isn't otherwise functional." Which sounds a lot like "sparks joy."
    - mc32 8y ago
      So here is where I'm coming from. Does a hammer provide "joy", maybe I haven't used a sander in over a year. I don't miss it; it doesn't provide joy, but it is very useful when needed. Do photographs and souvenirs and personal items provide utility, I'd say so.
      - phaedrus 8y ago
        Actually I own several hammers which spark joy: a small mini-hammer which fits perfectly in my hand. A large sledge hammer which is entirely too heavy to be practical, but feels like wielding Mjolnir when I use it to break brake discs loose. The real gray area is when you have some poor quality tools which you do need and use, and you can't yet afford to replace them with ones that do spark joy.
        justtopost 8y ago
        Yes, that dingy 'harbor freight zone' of joyless, but functional tools that would cost more than their utility to replace. I have found many tools I did not expect, can be rented at local stores. Its not like I need that brake tool every week to keep my home nice.
        abraae 8y ago
        Living out of the sticks, the tool that brings me joy is the one that's already lying around in my workshop, and that I don't need to drive into town to buy on that once-in-a-year occasion that I need it. Personally I try and buy tools second hand, as they are typically cheaper and of better quality than the new tools sold in hardware stores. And they can be resold for about the same I paid for them, making them free to own. Apart, that is, from their alleged intrusion on my personal joy from cluttering my workshop. Which is rubbish - workshops should be exempt from this joyful thinking, they are places where you want to find that useful piece of scrap material lying somewhere - anywhere - when you need it.
        8y ago
  - sct202 8y ago
    My parents have a basement overflowing of stuff that is full of potential utility, so I think that the joy aspect is to provide a different view point so people let go more easily.
    - mc32 8y ago
      True. But the same qualifier could be used for joy. Things could have potential for providing joy, they're just not providing joy right now. I guess, if I had "too many things", I'd probably set some parameters and get rid of unnecessary duplicates, broken things unlikely to get repaired and things unlikely to be used in any significant capacity in the foreseeable future -knowing that one may possibly have to reacquire something one disposed of.
    - abritinthebay 8y ago
      Potential utility is different to actual utility though. Is that stuff actually useful to them right now? Or in general? If the answer is no then it has zero utility.
  - chrisfosterelli 8y ago
    Can't these two coincide? As you mention, joy is subjective. For you, joy can be utility, and for someone else that can be something else. I think it's reasonable to suggest the rule for what things you should keep should be based around what you find good. If you mean utility in the John Stuart Mill way, then joy is the same thing but probably easier for the average person to grasp immediately.
  - spacehunt 8y ago
    I think part of the problem is with the translation. The original Japanese word used is ときめき (tokimeki), which literally means "heart throbbing". The actual thing you want to keep doesn't have to provide a joyful experience.
    - james_s_tayler 8y ago
      Yeah, the problem is no easy to understand direct mapping. Joy isn't the best word, but that's just language for you. I guess in a sense it's characterized by a positive, visceral reaction. But that's not a very marketable description.
      - ionforce 8y ago
        Hey, does holding this item effect a positive, visceral reaction?
  - PhasmaFelis 8y ago
    It's calculated to resonate with her target audience, sure. It seems silly to dismiss that as cynical marketing. As long as you're not attempting to harm people or get them to act against their interests, choosing words that appeal to your audience is just good design.
    - mc32 8y ago
      I think she knows her audience and is very savvy in using these terms because as you say they "resonate". So, I think she's making the right business decision to use the terminology. I'm saying personally I'd use different terminology to qualify things to keep/not keep.
  - spookthesunset 8y ago
    > I'd ask whether it provides utility I think the way to think about it is you need to change your relationship with those things that don't spark puppy-dog like joy from but you need. For example, I don't get particularly excited about all the damn weird DVI cables I have stashed in my drawer but I've realized if I toss them, I'll need them in a hurry and it really sucks having to buy new ones.
    - metamet 8y ago
      > For example, I don't get particularly excited about all the damn weird DVI cables I have stashed in my drawer but I've realized if I toss them, I'll need them in a hurry and it really sucks having to buy new ones. I think this is the exact thing that she's trying to help people overcome. It's the thought process that a lot of hoarders have. "Well, I don't need it now, but I will in the future." I think it's important to ask yourself if you will actually need those DVI cables. How often do you replace them? When was the last time you looked for one? How much time do they take to find? If you haven't needed a new DVI cable in 6 months, a year--what makes you think you'll need one in the next year? These are important distinctions to make. For me, I find that my whole cart of misc tech pieces and cables are rarely used, to the point where just getting rid of almost all of it is a huge relief. If I need another X cable, the mental tax of storing, sorting, and finding that cable is not worth the $10 it would cost to just order a new one when the need arises--if it ever does. It's very easy to rationalize the the prepper mindset of an item's utility. Yes, I MAY need this in the future... but if I don't, I'm just going to continue collecting things that may never serve any purpose. I find her approach to "sparking joy" to be a lot more than just marketing. She's trying to hone in on what we really should keep vs what we think we should keep. I have a stash of plain white t-shirts that I can justify scenarios for all day--but when did I actually need more than one in the last year? Maybe it would make sense for me to keep one on hand, but clear the others, because they neither bring me joy nor have a utilitarian purpose that's actually being enacted.
      - spookthesunset 8y ago
        Let me rephrase because I kinda made it sound like I'm a cable hoarder (I'm not.... I swear!! I'm just a cable connoisseur, thats all! hah!) I need a DVI cable because I have a headless DVR computer that once every blue moon needs a head. I've tossed that DVI cable once before because it didn't spark joy (none of my cables do) and lo and behold I needed to give my headless box a head or my wife won't be able to watch her shows. I had to run way out of my way to purchase a new one. It pissed me off and from then on, the new replacement sparks joy because I know there will come a time where I need it again and having on hand makes me happy. That those RCA to headphones jacks I don't use? Toss 'em. The 10 different power cords and three dozen HDMI cables of varying length? Toss them on the curb! But that DVI cable? I need that, damn it! I learned that that one DVI cable does spark joy because it is right there waiting for that one day when I actually need to head-ify my headless box. My current big problem is my main hobby is electronics and tinkering with meatspace stuff, which is a hobby that can easily encourage hanging on to every motor, weird wire and other bits and bobs "just in case". Every new purchase comes in bulk so you wind up with a three hundred pack of shrink wrap tubing, or 1000 assorted resistors. I'm still not entirely sure how to deal with that. Especially since life has interfered in a good way I've had to temporarily shelf the hobby for a few years.
  - tonyedgecombe 8y ago
    William Morris said: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." That seems a reasonable guide to me.
    - perilunar 8y ago
      Always loved that quote, and he's seems like such an interesting man. All this discussion of Joy versus Utility is silly: it's either/or, and if you can, both.
  - derefr 8y ago
    I feel like what Kondo is trying to say is another version of this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aq8BQMXRZX3BoFd4c/morality-is-awesome https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aq8BQMXRZX3BoFd4c/morality-i... I.e., people don't intuitively understand what "good" or "useful" is—those terms are mired in tons of prescriptive statements made by ideologues that get you confused. But "awesome" (or in this case, "joyous") isn't really a property people ever insist that something has for political reasons. It's something you've probably only ever heard as a descriptive word referring to things that are genuinely "awesome"/"joyous", and so your intuition on what is "awesome"/"joyous" is likely much more solid and easier to "hear." I would also argue that "joy" is a pretty useful word in the sense that asking about a thing's utility conjures images of sterile pro/con lists of a thing's immediate usefulness right now; while "joy" might be an acute nostalgia, or the sense of determined hypomania brought on by a clearly-imagined-and-still-enthusiastic plan of what you will be doing with the thing a year from now.
    - mc32 8y ago
      That's an interesting take and maybe that's what she's doing. Plus, I think she is making this idea accessible to people by putting it in very simple terms -despite my misgivings. Interestingly, another commenter mentioned that the actual word in Japanese isn't joy or sparking joy, but rather heart throb [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865829] which to me would eliminate quite a few more useful things that aren't as emotion inducing. All this reminds me of someone I worked with who said she liked Kondo's advice and took it to throw out anything she hadn't worn in six months. Which seemed like a wasteful way of thinking. [i.e. don't like something now nor for the past six months, toss; then month later, aha, I need that thing, lemme buy a new one. And what about Winter clothes or Summer clothes, etc.]
  - Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
    This seems like pointless cynicism by way of semantics. I think utility - as a term - carries more baggage in this context. People tend to easily come up with reasons they could hold on to something. Most things could be useful for one reason or another, but the problem is that, realistically, you've vanishingly likely to actually do something with it. Joy might describe a situation where the utility meets its need, where it's value to you is especially high. In other words, I think 'joy' was a deliberate and informed choice. Finally, I'm not at all sold on 'utility' having poor marketability. Maybe not great, but it speaks well to the value-optimizer and many people that are interested in self-help sorts of subjects.
    - mc32 8y ago
      I feel the same way about "spark joy" or the more direct translation of "heart throbbing". I rarely assign that emotion to tools or non-sentimental items which I need in daily life. Some things you use to perform quotidian or even tiresome activities like a rake, a snow shovel, laundry detergent, clothes for going to work, etc.
- rdrey 8y ago
  My partner made me watch a few episodes on Netflix. I was pretty sceptical about finding something innovative in the show but thought her approach made a lot of sense for physical things. I was wondering about translating it into organising my digital life. What's equivalent to step 1: Clothes? Probably video downloads or other large media in the Downloads folder that take up a lot of space and carry little emotional attachment. It gets harder to figure out how to organize important documents, though. But they should probably be united in one "heap" first, too, maybe with annotations. Luckily we don't need to let go of many things in the digital realm, so organising things with emotional attachment is a lot easier.
  - spookthesunset 8y ago
    > I was wondering about translating it into organising my digital life. Yeah, I've gone down this path too. The thing about digital is storage is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. There is very little cost to having a lot of "clutter" in your digital world. It doesn't take up physical space and it doesn't really occupy mental space either. Arguably the cost of trying to de-clutter it is higher than the cost of accidentally deleting something you might want in the future, which is why I'm pretty sure I have never bothered. Put another way, decluttering your digital space is a potentially NPV negative affair--the costs of accidental deletion and time spent decluttering outweigh the gains made by having a "decluttered" digital space. The only thing in the digital world I think I could justify de-cluttering is my photos. I take a lot of duplicate pictures with slightly different variations in lighting and focus. Having 10 slightly different versions of the same scene is clutter -- especially when 8 of them feature people with their eyes closed, not smiling, not looking at the camera, not in focus, etc. The rest of my digital stuff isn't like that--there is no 10 slightly different copies of the same paper I wrote in college 10 years ago. Just one. Why bother deleting it? An e-book I read once three years ago and will probably never read again only takes up 30 megs of space when pulled down from the cloud. It doesn't occupy physical space in my life. Why delete it? It costs more of my time & energy to nuke it than just let it be.
    - glhaynes 8y ago
      Well said. One important part of that for me is to resist any attempt to impose a structure on those "piles" of digital docs. For the things you mention, I'm exclusively going to access them in the future — if I ever do — via search (or perhaps in some late-night nostalgic browsing) so I don't need to organize the paper I wrote in college into a complicated folder hierarchy of College > Biology > 2nd semester. Just throw it on the pile. Embrace its pileness. If archiving a doc in this way takes any thought whatsoever, I'm going to be much less likely to do the archiving in the first place and it's going to end up causing clutter in some place where it does negatively affect me.
- 0xCMP 8y ago
  From my reading it seems to be his objection to her method and whether "joy" is the right metric/method for determining if something stays. While I know, from experience, what he says is true I still think that Kondo has a better system for most people. I'll do my best to explain what I've gotten from the show. I think Kondo's approach is actually very simple and focused on a single thing: Keep your home tidy. Her job in a sense is convince people with a problem to take steps to solve that problem which often involves getting rid of things, but not always. It's actually building habits to keep things organized and realizing when something is no longer important and therefore doesn't justify the work needed to keep it in it's proper place. She starts with clothing, which often is plentiful and easily to identify some vague person definition of "joy." Pure utilitarianism isn't right for everyone and this allows the person to determine that on their own. You can see this in the show as people go through their clothes it's hard at first but it provides a bunch of opportunities to find obvious "yes"/"no"s to the joy question. The genius I find is that she starts with clothing and leaves sentimental items for the end after you've gained experience determining what "joy" really means to you. As well as the act of "thanking" items which once practiced you can do at the harder steps more naturally and not feel guilty about getting rid of things which are meaningful, but not needed anymore. Touching the items provides some safety by saving things which you might actually get rid of, but just can't. It makes the process much less risky. Later on, by continuing to use the method occasionally, you might realize that this actually doesn't bring you joy anymore, but now you're able to accept this and remove the item. We're trying to be happy here, not perfect. The genius of the method is how many points of it are designed to gradually gain experience to keeping things tidy while minimizing the overwhelming feelings and riskiness that one can feel when getting rid of things. Which makes for a system that even those with the least willpower and discipline can gain something from.
emtel 8y ago
Going through Marie Kondo's process was amazing for me. I've tried so many times to get organized, and her book seemed to address the exact reasons why each of my previous attempts has failed. And it really, really, worked. I would encourage anyone trying it to actually give the stupid sounding stuff in it a try. For instance, I found with items I was having a hard time letting go of, verbally thanking them for their service and saying goodbye, as she suggests, actually worked. Somehow it seems to satisfy whatever part of your brain is reticent to part with a particular thing.
- cellularmitosis 8y ago
  I find that taking a picture of something also makes it much easier to let go of.
  - derefr 8y ago
    Or—if your momento is a physical picture (e.g. an old photo album, or a scrapbook, or childhood drawings left on the fridge for years)—try digitizing it.
    - Sgt_Apone 8y ago
      That's a really great idea for kids drawings. I'll always keep a select few special ones, but any parent knows you'll end up with an art gallery if you keep everything. Making a digital art gallery of that stuff is a really good approach to letting go.
      - PascLeRasc 8y ago
        I wouldn't go that far. No digital gallery will keep the physicality of your kids' art and you'll really cherish that part when they're older, and throwing away what your kid makes is really going to squash any interest in making more of it.
- cwkoss 8y ago
  In the show, she explains that she suggests thanking items because it reduces the guilt people feel about throwing a "good" item away.
callumprentice 8y ago
As an obsessive organizer at home, almost to the point of my family's dismay until they cackle at how easy it is to find things now, I feel like I need to binge watch the whole series and hone my skills. As well as the initial discard phase, organizational part (loads of plastic boxes, label printer connected to a computer), the piece most people don't mention is how to keep it tidy afterwards. In my experience the key to this is making it absurdly easy to put something away - this means easy to access storage, clear, easy to read labels and perhaps most importantly, plenty of capacity to grow. It's no good putting all your widgets in a box that's only just big enough to hold them. Later on when you acquire more, there will be nowhere to put them so you'll likely leave them out or dump them in a different box. I've used this approach in my garage, my home-office and our medicine cupboard (closet) to great effect. Next up is the pantry..
- npunt 8y ago
  > It's no good putting all your widgets in a box that's only just big enough to hold them. One of my personal organizing rules is that if a box / container is over 80% full, it’s time to split it and get a second box.
Kurtz79 8y ago
(somewhat related) Still my favorite essay by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html
- kaybe 8y ago
  > Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. Hm, this is an interesting idea.
  - wccrawford 8y ago
    It actually stands out to me as odd, given the rest of the article. The same could be said about movies, games, toy cars, etc. Any 1 thing is easy to own a lot of, so long as it's small. It's when you have multiple collections, or even 1 collection that's too large, that it's a problem. I have a lot of hobbies that I do only occasionally, and the stuff from them is a little overwhelming. And when combined with all my wife and I have kept because we might need it some day, the hobby room is a disaster area. We've even gone over our limit on books. To store more books, we'd have to get rid of other things at this point. And most of those books just sit on shelves and never get read. Some might, but overall they're just not actually being read. To make it worse, books are one of the things that could be digital instead of physical and they could take no space at all. I even prefer reading on my Kindle over a physical book. In the end, I just can't agree with him on books. (And I don't think Marie Kondo does, either, based on watching a few episodes of the TV show.)
- qohen 8y ago
  I was taken with the main idea of this paragraph from the essay when I first encountered it a while back: A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.
klenwell 8y ago
I always liked Anthony Bourdain's take on "Meez" from Kitchen Confidential: Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a line cook’s ‘meez’ — meaning his setup, his carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, backups, and so on. As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system... The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it: you know where to find everything with your eyes closed, everything you need during the course of the shift is at the ready at arm’s reach, your defenses are deployed. If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for backup. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook’s station in the middle of a rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He’d press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, bread crumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side towel. “You see this?” he’d inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef’s palm. “That’s what the inside of your head looks like now.” I imagine most developers will recognize the obvious parallels with our craft. The full passage: https://books.google.com/books?id=XAsRYpsX9dEC&lpg=PA65&ots=dOy2B3EFxH&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=XAsRYpsX9dEC&lpg=PA65&ots=...
- johnchristopher 8y ago
  Totally OT but: Of course I can see this chef's point but why does it look like they are psychopaths on loose in the kitchen ? When I talk with chefs or people running cuisine they are very aggressive and ready to burst out at any thing with a confrontational and "I am always right" attitude.
  - joezydeco 8y ago
    Reading the entire Bourdain book gives a lot of insight. The restaurant business is high-pressure and low-margin. It's a cutthroat world and if you're not aggressive enough you'll get eaten alive...literally.
scotty79 8y ago
I think I'll just buy another flat and move. I'll bring stuff from the old one only after I need it.
dejaime 8y ago
got to love that intrusive fullpage ad that needs to be scrolled down to be closed. It was probably not worth reading anyway.
- spinchange 8y ago
  The interstitial did not spark joy.
rsync 8y ago
“People ask me about the positive side of clutter and I say, ‘There isn’t any positive side.’” This is incorrect, of course. I dislike clutter and I personally maintain a relatively clutter-free existence but of course there is a trade-off to be made between short term expediency and lack of clutter. Understanding this trade-off has been helpful to me - especially in designing and acquiring living spaces. Here is an example: My current office space requires two rooms. However, I went out of my way to find a suite with three rooms - the third of which was not, and continues to not, be necessary. What this "buffer space" allows me to do is stage, or cache, incoming items and/or projects while allowing me to make full (clutter-free) use of the necessary two rooms without interruption. Running my office without a third room would be like running a CPU without a cache - it is perfectly workable and there's no reason it can't be done - but it requires immediate, real-time interruption of work to maintain the empty (clutter-free) pipeline (really stretching the CPU analogy here, but you get the idea).
- Jimpulse 8y ago
  This is a wonderful analogy and a great idea. We just did a bunch of cleaning and organizing for a holiday party. A place for everything and everything in it's place kind of thing. I've never thought of dedicated space to serve as a cache to prevent the clutter from affecting the rest of the space.
- dustinmoorenet 8y ago
  I think you are confusing what the article means by clutter. You don't keep things in the third room that are unnecessary. It is just that spending time organizing them in a system that would appear visually de-cluttered would be a waste of time. Your third room might eventually need to be cleaned out once your cache gets full of things that, for one reason or another, you don't need anymore.
- closeparen 8y ago
  You can think of clutter as a ratio of stuff to space... adding space is one way to deal with it. Just not one that’s practical for most people without major life upheavals like moving house.
- 8y ago
kriro 8y ago
I own an English version of her book and recently bought a German copy to give as a gift for Christmas. Strange as it may sound, even though I don't really like the "style of the method" it's very efficient. Thanking the items and the whole sparking of joy are a bit over the top for me and chapter 5 is by and large too spiritual for my taste. I toss the stuff away without any parting words and joy for me is more a "is it useful" or "do I really need this" (which is pretty much what she has in mind anyways). What I consider pure gold is: * Dumping everything on the floor and going through that mountain because it shows you very clearly how much stuff you have * All the advice on folding. I actually enjoy the folding and storing now because I know it's more neat overall. I vastly prefer the vertical shirts to a stack now. I probably wouldn't have considered rethinking the old stack of stuff if it wasn't for the book * Giving items a home of sorts is also a good overall concepts. I have caught myself thinking "this item is out of place, let me quickly return it to its home" * Going by category instead of location...really helps me get started/keep tidying On a related note, I found the Netflix series surprisingly underwhelming/repetitive. The most useful parts were the folding explanations. tl;dr: MK's stuff is great, I'd recommend the book to everyone :)
Tomte 8y ago
I've always dismissed her stuff as one of those pseudo-spiritual neo-philosophies that mix a bit of Eastern wisdom with platitudes and sell it to affluent Westerners in search of meaning. Talk about Baader-Meinhof effect: Just yesterday I spontaneously picked up the book on Kindle, and I'm blown away. It is so much more. Yes, there is a lot of marketing behind it, of course. But I also sense an honesty in it that has already semi-convinced me to actually do it! And just a second ago I peeked into the Google Talk video and saw that she doesn't speak English? If this was a marketing stunt, she would have learned English (or the publisher would have found another figurehead). I actually admire Marie Kondo quite a bit.
- pureliquidhw 8y ago
  I really liked how the book comes with no strings attached. Everything you need is in that one small book. No subscription, no rich dad poor dad XVII: buy a cheap house and flip it trash. Just one book to help simplify life. Might come across as a Kondo shill, the type of which I have called out elsewhere on HN, so I accept any berating due. I do recommend getting it from a local Library, watching the show, or just find a recap online!
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  You should do it. It can sometimes be pain in the ass and it takes a long time. It took us several months to finish, during the process your house will be a huge mess. We donated bags and bags and bags of stuff. It is truly amazing how much crap you can unthinkingly acquire. In the end it was totally worth the trouble. Get the book and make sure to give it a full read-through before starting. The order you do things matters quite a bit.
- PascLeRasc 8y ago
  Yesterday I was thinking about how we only notice stuff relevant to our interests after we get into them, thanks for putting a name to it!
- espressomachiat 8y ago
  >But I also sense an honesty in it that has already semi-convinced me to actually do it! This subtle honesty is incredibly persuasive
ergest 8y ago
Messiness is highly correlated with creativity. People greatly preferred convention in the tidy room and novelty in the messy room. [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/its-not-mess-its-creativity.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/its-not-me...
- nerdface 8y ago
  Did you read the research paper? > Three experiments tested the novel hypotheses that orderly environments lead people toward tradition and convention, whereas disorderly environments encourage breaking with tradition and convention—and that both settings can alter preferences, choice, and behavior Drawing conclusions from a single research paper referenced from an _opinion_ piece correlating messiness to alterations in choice and behavior in no way discounts the benefits of a clutter-free environment.
pmarreck 8y ago
Is the video not playing for anyone else?
- xutopia 8y ago
  It's just a trailer for the show. This small japanese woman walks in people's homes with a huge smile and helps them organize their stuff. Houses are mostly full of piles of unneeded things and there are many cutscenes of people crying over getting rid of some things with sentimental value (deceased husband's clothes for example). Most of the conversation in this thread is about the content of the article. The video was just for context.
danjc 8y ago
Marie's process is basically Map, then Reduce - for your home.
throwaway713 8y ago
> Decisional procrastinators report that they have too much clutter, which interferes with their quality of life, and clutter, in turn, is the best predictor of procrastination. Hmm... n=1 anecdote, but I hate clutter and lead a minimalist lifestyle yet procrastinate quite a bit.
tbirrell 8y ago
Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there. Even now, as well off as I am, I tend to collect things (and by extension, clutter) because I can see the potential need for something in the future. I've been trying to overcome this mindset and slim down my possessions to the things I need and the few sentimental items I have, but it's not easy at all. If someone else came into my house and started trying to clean up, I'd probably lose my mind (admittedly for a few unrelated reasons as well, but largely because of this mindset)
- pureliquidhw 8y ago
  Might be worth watching an episode of the show to better understand what Kondo's process is. She doesn't clean or work some one off magic. She teaches 5(?) core lessons to help maintain tidiness. She doesn't excavate their piles of stuff for them.
  - perfmode 8y ago
    I've found that 80% of the Kondo process has been discarding items. That's just my personal take.
    - pureliquidhw 8y ago
      Perhaps, but it is the individual who throws things out, not her. That's the distinction I was making.
- ansible 8y ago
  Yep. When I have the urge to keep something, I ask myself if I have definite plans for it. If I do, great! And that helps decide where it will go. Otherwise, it goes into the donation box, recycling, etc.
oarabbus_ 8y ago
On the flipside “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” – Albert Einstein
- ttarabula 8y ago
  Though I agree that there's a reductionist aspect to this declutter thinking, I've always thought the answer to this question is "an ordered mind", which is very different from an empty mind of course.
  - derefr 8y ago
    I think the implication was "an empty mind." Picture not a cleared-off tabletop, but an office desk with drawers where both the desktop and the drawers are empty.
- lern_too_spel 8y ago
  https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/02/clutter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/02/clutter/
- perilunar 8y ago
  An empty mind. Buddhists and Taoists value it, even it westerners don't.
RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago
Given the housing prices in the Bay Area, comparing the joy you get from something with the cost to store it, can really help with decluttering. I live in a smallish apartment, and was tempted to rent some extra storage for stuff like holiday decorations and other stuff used seasonally. Then I realized at $100/month for the extra storage, it is cheaper for me to buy the seasonal stuff every year and then when I am done with it to throw away/recycle it.
ThrustVectoring 8y ago
Fair warning for people with ADD/ADHD or otherwise struggle with organization: removing clutter is a different thing than hiding away everything so that the room is magazine-photograph ready. Being able to use your environment to give you visual reminders of various outstanding tasks and statuses is an incredibly important coping technique for people with executive function issues. Like, I have a bunch of open wire shelves for storing the bulk of my groceries - otherwise, I tend to literally forget that I have something, and I won't notice when I get low or run out of things. It's ugly as hell, but it's a functional ugly, and dropping functionality to make things pretty is not really a good idea IMO.
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  This also highlights why it's so helpful to eliminate clutter; the things you see are the things that matter. When I open my fridge, I don't see amorphous 'stuff'; I've got leftovers one and two here, extra ingredients that need to be used there and there, and the rest is staples that remain there and get replaced as needed. Anything that doesn't fit that gets tossed. If I can't pick it up and come up with a plan for it, it goes in the bin. If it's a longer-term plan, it gets noted on a list stuck to the door. ezpz I waste less food now, and have less stress about meal planning. Pantry is similar; at this point I can just glance at a shelf and sense whether I'm low on something.
  - ThrustVectoring 8y ago
    Oh nice, sticking the note on the door is really useful for that sort of thing. But yeah, the key insight is to make your environment as useful as possible for the goals and life you want to have.

171 points by anarbadalov 8y ago

Odd that the article includes some weird non-Kondo advice about "don't touch it", probably contrary even, given that her approach is very intimate/fluffy. I guess the overall idea is to think more objectively about something's value, using your own sense of "joy" as a proxy for that value function. For a while now I've been thinking about writing a "Marie Kondo's approach distilled for engineers"...

ValentineC 8y ago
> For a while now I've been thinking about writing a "Marie Kondo's approach distilled for engineers"... Please do! I've been doing my fair bit of KonMari recently, but I have a fair bit of rationalising to do with regard to getting rid of things.
sct202 8y ago
Yeah, from the netflix series it's more like you have to touch everything of the same category and then compare how you feel.
mc32 8y ago
Well, /I/ think her approach is very marketing-oriented. For example she asks whether an item sparks "joy". Joy is kind transient, very subjective, etc. But it fits within her "shtick" and it works. For me, I'd ask whether it provides utility, but that sounds very boring and isn't a term which would fit well in marketing.
- eli 8y ago
  Do sentimental items provide utility? Only if you define utility in a way that includes "owning this makes me feel particularly good even though the object itself isn't otherwise functional." Which sounds a lot like "sparks joy."
  - mc32 8y ago
    So here is where I'm coming from. Does a hammer provide "joy", maybe I haven't used a sander in over a year. I don't miss it; it doesn't provide joy, but it is very useful when needed. Do photographs and souvenirs and personal items provide utility, I'd say so.
    - phaedrus 8y ago
      Actually I own several hammers which spark joy: a small mini-hammer which fits perfectly in my hand. A large sledge hammer which is entirely too heavy to be practical, but feels like wielding Mjolnir when I use it to break brake discs loose. The real gray area is when you have some poor quality tools which you do need and use, and you can't yet afford to replace them with ones that do spark joy.
      - justtopost 8y ago
        Yes, that dingy 'harbor freight zone' of joyless, but functional tools that would cost more than their utility to replace. I have found many tools I did not expect, can be rented at local stores. Its not like I need that brake tool every week to keep my home nice.
        abraae 8y ago
        Living out of the sticks, the tool that brings me joy is the one that's already lying around in my workshop, and that I don't need to drive into town to buy on that once-in-a-year occasion that I need it. Personally I try and buy tools second hand, as they are typically cheaper and of better quality than the new tools sold in hardware stores. And they can be resold for about the same I paid for them, making them free to own. Apart, that is, from their alleged intrusion on my personal joy from cluttering my workshop. Which is rubbish - workshops should be exempt from this joyful thinking, they are places where you want to find that useful piece of scrap material lying somewhere - anywhere - when you need it.
        8y ago
- sct202 8y ago
  My parents have a basement overflowing of stuff that is full of potential utility, so I think that the joy aspect is to provide a different view point so people let go more easily.
  - mc32 8y ago
    True. But the same qualifier could be used for joy. Things could have potential for providing joy, they're just not providing joy right now. I guess, if I had "too many things", I'd probably set some parameters and get rid of unnecessary duplicates, broken things unlikely to get repaired and things unlikely to be used in any significant capacity in the foreseeable future -knowing that one may possibly have to reacquire something one disposed of.
  - abritinthebay 8y ago
    Potential utility is different to actual utility though. Is that stuff actually useful to them right now? Or in general? If the answer is no then it has zero utility.
- chrisfosterelli 8y ago
  Can't these two coincide? As you mention, joy is subjective. For you, joy can be utility, and for someone else that can be something else. I think it's reasonable to suggest the rule for what things you should keep should be based around what you find good. If you mean utility in the John Stuart Mill way, then joy is the same thing but probably easier for the average person to grasp immediately.
- spacehunt 8y ago
  I think part of the problem is with the translation. The original Japanese word used is ときめき (tokimeki), which literally means "heart throbbing". The actual thing you want to keep doesn't have to provide a joyful experience.
  - james_s_tayler 8y ago
    Yeah, the problem is no easy to understand direct mapping. Joy isn't the best word, but that's just language for you. I guess in a sense it's characterized by a positive, visceral reaction. But that's not a very marketable description.
    - ionforce 8y ago
      Hey, does holding this item effect a positive, visceral reaction?
- PhasmaFelis 8y ago
  It's calculated to resonate with her target audience, sure. It seems silly to dismiss that as cynical marketing. As long as you're not attempting to harm people or get them to act against their interests, choosing words that appeal to your audience is just good design.
  - mc32 8y ago
    I think she knows her audience and is very savvy in using these terms because as you say they "resonate". So, I think she's making the right business decision to use the terminology. I'm saying personally I'd use different terminology to qualify things to keep/not keep.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  > I'd ask whether it provides utility I think the way to think about it is you need to change your relationship with those things that don't spark puppy-dog like joy from but you need. For example, I don't get particularly excited about all the damn weird DVI cables I have stashed in my drawer but I've realized if I toss them, I'll need them in a hurry and it really sucks having to buy new ones.
  - metamet 8y ago
    > For example, I don't get particularly excited about all the damn weird DVI cables I have stashed in my drawer but I've realized if I toss them, I'll need them in a hurry and it really sucks having to buy new ones. I think this is the exact thing that she's trying to help people overcome. It's the thought process that a lot of hoarders have. "Well, I don't need it now, but I will in the future." I think it's important to ask yourself if you will actually need those DVI cables. How often do you replace them? When was the last time you looked for one? How much time do they take to find? If you haven't needed a new DVI cable in 6 months, a year--what makes you think you'll need one in the next year? These are important distinctions to make. For me, I find that my whole cart of misc tech pieces and cables are rarely used, to the point where just getting rid of almost all of it is a huge relief. If I need another X cable, the mental tax of storing, sorting, and finding that cable is not worth the $10 it would cost to just order a new one when the need arises--if it ever does. It's very easy to rationalize the the prepper mindset of an item's utility. Yes, I MAY need this in the future... but if I don't, I'm just going to continue collecting things that may never serve any purpose. I find her approach to "sparking joy" to be a lot more than just marketing. She's trying to hone in on what we really should keep vs what we think we should keep. I have a stash of plain white t-shirts that I can justify scenarios for all day--but when did I actually need more than one in the last year? Maybe it would make sense for me to keep one on hand, but clear the others, because they neither bring me joy nor have a utilitarian purpose that's actually being enacted.
    - spookthesunset 8y ago
      Let me rephrase because I kinda made it sound like I'm a cable hoarder (I'm not.... I swear!! I'm just a cable connoisseur, thats all! hah!) I need a DVI cable because I have a headless DVR computer that once every blue moon needs a head. I've tossed that DVI cable once before because it didn't spark joy (none of my cables do) and lo and behold I needed to give my headless box a head or my wife won't be able to watch her shows. I had to run way out of my way to purchase a new one. It pissed me off and from then on, the new replacement sparks joy because I know there will come a time where I need it again and having on hand makes me happy. That those RCA to headphones jacks I don't use? Toss 'em. The 10 different power cords and three dozen HDMI cables of varying length? Toss them on the curb! But that DVI cable? I need that, damn it! I learned that that one DVI cable does spark joy because it is right there waiting for that one day when I actually need to head-ify my headless box. My current big problem is my main hobby is electronics and tinkering with meatspace stuff, which is a hobby that can easily encourage hanging on to every motor, weird wire and other bits and bobs "just in case". Every new purchase comes in bulk so you wind up with a three hundred pack of shrink wrap tubing, or 1000 assorted resistors. I'm still not entirely sure how to deal with that. Especially since life has interfered in a good way I've had to temporarily shelf the hobby for a few years.
- tonyedgecombe 8y ago
  William Morris said: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." That seems a reasonable guide to me.
  - perilunar 8y ago
    Always loved that quote, and he's seems like such an interesting man. All this discussion of Joy versus Utility is silly: it's either/or, and if you can, both.
- derefr 8y ago
  I feel like what Kondo is trying to say is another version of this: https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aq8BQMXRZX3BoFd4c/morality-is-awesome https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/Aq8BQMXRZX3BoFd4c/morality-i... I.e., people don't intuitively understand what "good" or "useful" is—those terms are mired in tons of prescriptive statements made by ideologues that get you confused. But "awesome" (or in this case, "joyous") isn't really a property people ever insist that something has for political reasons. It's something you've probably only ever heard as a descriptive word referring to things that are genuinely "awesome"/"joyous", and so your intuition on what is "awesome"/"joyous" is likely much more solid and easier to "hear." I would also argue that "joy" is a pretty useful word in the sense that asking about a thing's utility conjures images of sterile pro/con lists of a thing's immediate usefulness right now; while "joy" might be an acute nostalgia, or the sense of determined hypomania brought on by a clearly-imagined-and-still-enthusiastic plan of what you will be doing with the thing a year from now.
  - mc32 8y ago
    That's an interesting take and maybe that's what she's doing. Plus, I think she is making this idea accessible to people by putting it in very simple terms -despite my misgivings. Interestingly, another commenter mentioned that the actual word in Japanese isn't joy or sparking joy, but rather heart throb [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865829 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18865829] which to me would eliminate quite a few more useful things that aren't as emotion inducing. All this reminds me of someone I worked with who said she liked Kondo's advice and took it to throw out anything she hadn't worn in six months. Which seemed like a wasteful way of thinking. [i.e. don't like something now nor for the past six months, toss; then month later, aha, I need that thing, lemme buy a new one. And what about Winter clothes or Summer clothes, etc.]
- Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
  This seems like pointless cynicism by way of semantics. I think utility - as a term - carries more baggage in this context. People tend to easily come up with reasons they could hold on to something. Most things could be useful for one reason or another, but the problem is that, realistically, you've vanishingly likely to actually do something with it. Joy might describe a situation where the utility meets its need, where it's value to you is especially high. In other words, I think 'joy' was a deliberate and informed choice. Finally, I'm not at all sold on 'utility' having poor marketability. Maybe not great, but it speaks well to the value-optimizer and many people that are interested in self-help sorts of subjects.
  - mc32 8y ago
    I feel the same way about "spark joy" or the more direct translation of "heart throbbing". I rarely assign that emotion to tools or non-sentimental items which I need in daily life. Some things you use to perform quotidian or even tiresome activities like a rake, a snow shovel, laundry detergent, clothes for going to work, etc.
rdrey 8y ago
My partner made me watch a few episodes on Netflix. I was pretty sceptical about finding something innovative in the show but thought her approach made a lot of sense for physical things. I was wondering about translating it into organising my digital life. What's equivalent to step 1: Clothes? Probably video downloads or other large media in the Downloads folder that take up a lot of space and carry little emotional attachment. It gets harder to figure out how to organize important documents, though. But they should probably be united in one "heap" first, too, maybe with annotations. Luckily we don't need to let go of many things in the digital realm, so organising things with emotional attachment is a lot easier.
- spookthesunset 8y ago
  > I was wondering about translating it into organising my digital life. Yeah, I've gone down this path too. The thing about digital is storage is cheap and getting cheaper all the time. There is very little cost to having a lot of "clutter" in your digital world. It doesn't take up physical space and it doesn't really occupy mental space either. Arguably the cost of trying to de-clutter it is higher than the cost of accidentally deleting something you might want in the future, which is why I'm pretty sure I have never bothered. Put another way, decluttering your digital space is a potentially NPV negative affair--the costs of accidental deletion and time spent decluttering outweigh the gains made by having a "decluttered" digital space. The only thing in the digital world I think I could justify de-cluttering is my photos. I take a lot of duplicate pictures with slightly different variations in lighting and focus. Having 10 slightly different versions of the same scene is clutter -- especially when 8 of them feature people with their eyes closed, not smiling, not looking at the camera, not in focus, etc. The rest of my digital stuff isn't like that--there is no 10 slightly different copies of the same paper I wrote in college 10 years ago. Just one. Why bother deleting it? An e-book I read once three years ago and will probably never read again only takes up 30 megs of space when pulled down from the cloud. It doesn't occupy physical space in my life. Why delete it? It costs more of my time & energy to nuke it than just let it be.
  - glhaynes 8y ago
    Well said. One important part of that for me is to resist any attempt to impose a structure on those "piles" of digital docs. For the things you mention, I'm exclusively going to access them in the future — if I ever do — via search (or perhaps in some late-night nostalgic browsing) so I don't need to organize the paper I wrote in college into a complicated folder hierarchy of College > Biology > 2nd semester. Just throw it on the pile. Embrace its pileness. If archiving a doc in this way takes any thought whatsoever, I'm going to be much less likely to do the archiving in the first place and it's going to end up causing clutter in some place where it does negatively affect me.
0xCMP 8y ago
From my reading it seems to be his objection to her method and whether "joy" is the right metric/method for determining if something stays. While I know, from experience, what he says is true I still think that Kondo has a better system for most people. I'll do my best to explain what I've gotten from the show. I think Kondo's approach is actually very simple and focused on a single thing: Keep your home tidy. Her job in a sense is convince people with a problem to take steps to solve that problem which often involves getting rid of things, but not always. It's actually building habits to keep things organized and realizing when something is no longer important and therefore doesn't justify the work needed to keep it in it's proper place. She starts with clothing, which often is plentiful and easily to identify some vague person definition of "joy." Pure utilitarianism isn't right for everyone and this allows the person to determine that on their own. You can see this in the show as people go through their clothes it's hard at first but it provides a bunch of opportunities to find obvious "yes"/"no"s to the joy question. The genius I find is that she starts with clothing and leaves sentimental items for the end after you've gained experience determining what "joy" really means to you. As well as the act of "thanking" items which once practiced you can do at the harder steps more naturally and not feel guilty about getting rid of things which are meaningful, but not needed anymore. Touching the items provides some safety by saving things which you might actually get rid of, but just can't. It makes the process much less risky. Later on, by continuing to use the method occasionally, you might realize that this actually doesn't bring you joy anymore, but now you're able to accept this and remove the item. We're trying to be happy here, not perfect. The genius of the method is how many points of it are designed to gradually gain experience to keeping things tidy while minimizing the overwhelming feelings and riskiness that one can feel when getting rid of things. Which makes for a system that even those with the least willpower and discipline can gain something from.

emtel 8y ago

Going through Marie Kondo's process was amazing for me. I've tried so many times to get organized, and her book seemed to address the exact reasons why each of my previous attempts has failed. And it really, really, worked. I would encourage anyone trying it to actually give the stupid sounding stuff in it a try. For instance, I found with items I was having a hard time letting go of, verbally thanking them for their service and saying goodbye, as she suggests, actually worked. Somehow it seems to satisfy whatever part of your brain is reticent to part with a particular thing.

cellularmitosis 8y ago
I find that taking a picture of something also makes it much easier to let go of.
- derefr 8y ago
  Or—if your momento is a physical picture (e.g. an old photo album, or a scrapbook, or childhood drawings left on the fridge for years)—try digitizing it.
  - Sgt_Apone 8y ago
    That's a really great idea for kids drawings. I'll always keep a select few special ones, but any parent knows you'll end up with an art gallery if you keep everything. Making a digital art gallery of that stuff is a really good approach to letting go.
    - PascLeRasc 8y ago
      I wouldn't go that far. No digital gallery will keep the physicality of your kids' art and you'll really cherish that part when they're older, and throwing away what your kid makes is really going to squash any interest in making more of it.
cwkoss 8y ago
In the show, she explains that she suggests thanking items because it reduces the guilt people feel about throwing a "good" item away.

callumprentice 8y ago

As an obsessive organizer at home, almost to the point of my family's dismay until they cackle at how easy it is to find things now, I feel like I need to binge watch the whole series and hone my skills. As well as the initial discard phase, organizational part (loads of plastic boxes, label printer connected to a computer), the piece most people don't mention is how to keep it tidy afterwards. In my experience the key to this is making it absurdly easy to put something away - this means easy to access storage, clear, easy to read labels and perhaps most importantly, plenty of capacity to grow. It's no good putting all your widgets in a box that's only just big enough to hold them. Later on when you acquire more, there will be nowhere to put them so you'll likely leave them out or dump them in a different box. I've used this approach in my garage, my home-office and our medicine cupboard (closet) to great effect. Next up is the pantry..

npunt 8y ago
> It's no good putting all your widgets in a box that's only just big enough to hold them. One of my personal organizing rules is that if a box / container is over 80% full, it’s time to split it and get a second box.

Kurtz79 8y ago

(somewhat related) Still my favorite essay by Paul Graham: http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html http://www.paulgraham.com/stuff.html

kaybe 8y ago
> Books are more like a fluid than individual objects. Hm, this is an interesting idea.
- wccrawford 8y ago
  It actually stands out to me as odd, given the rest of the article. The same could be said about movies, games, toy cars, etc. Any 1 thing is easy to own a lot of, so long as it's small. It's when you have multiple collections, or even 1 collection that's too large, that it's a problem. I have a lot of hobbies that I do only occasionally, and the stuff from them is a little overwhelming. And when combined with all my wife and I have kept because we might need it some day, the hobby room is a disaster area. We've even gone over our limit on books. To store more books, we'd have to get rid of other things at this point. And most of those books just sit on shelves and never get read. Some might, but overall they're just not actually being read. To make it worse, books are one of the things that could be digital instead of physical and they could take no space at all. I even prefer reading on my Kindle over a physical book. In the end, I just can't agree with him on books. (And I don't think Marie Kondo does, either, based on watching a few episodes of the TV show.)
qohen 8y ago
I was taken with the main idea of this paragraph from the essay when I first encountered it a while back: A cluttered room saps one's spirits. One reason, obviously, is that there's less room for people in a room full of stuff. But there's more going on than that. I think humans constantly scan their environment to build a mental model of what's around them. And the harder a scene is to parse, the less energy you have left for conscious thoughts. A cluttered room is literally exhausting.

klenwell 8y ago

I always liked Anthony Bourdain's take on "Meez" from Kitchen Confidential: Mise-en-place is the religion of all good line cooks. Do not fuck with a line cook’s ‘meez’ — meaning his setup, his carefully arranged supplies of sea salt, rough-cracked pepper, softened butter, cooking oil, wine, backups, and so on. As a cook, your station, and its condition, its state of readiness, is an extension of your nervous system... The universe is in order when your station is set up the way you like it: you know where to find everything with your eyes closed, everything you need during the course of the shift is at the ready at arm’s reach, your defenses are deployed. If you let your mise-en-place run down, get dirty and disorganized, you’ll quickly find yourself spinning in place and calling for backup. I worked with a chef who used to step behind the line to a dirty cook’s station in the middle of a rush to explain why the offending cook was falling behind. He’d press his palm down on the cutting board, which was littered with peppercorns, spattered sauce, bits of parsley, bread crumbs and the usual flotsam and jetsam that accumulates quickly on a station if not constantly wiped away with a moist side towel. “You see this?” he’d inquire, raising his palm so that the cook could see the bits of dirt and scraps sticking to his chef’s palm. “That’s what the inside of your head looks like now.” I imagine most developers will recognize the obvious parallels with our craft. The full passage: https://books.google.com/books?id=XAsRYpsX9dEC&lpg=PA65&ots=dOy2B3EFxH&pg=PA65#v=onepage&q&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=XAsRYpsX9dEC&lpg=PA65&ots=...

johnchristopher 8y ago
Totally OT but: Of course I can see this chef's point but why does it look like they are psychopaths on loose in the kitchen ? When I talk with chefs or people running cuisine they are very aggressive and ready to burst out at any thing with a confrontational and "I am always right" attitude.
- joezydeco 8y ago
  Reading the entire Bourdain book gives a lot of insight. The restaurant business is high-pressure and low-margin. It's a cutthroat world and if you're not aggressive enough you'll get eaten alive...literally.

scotty79 8y ago

I think I'll just buy another flat and move. I'll bring stuff from the old one only after I need it.

dejaime 8y ago

got to love that intrusive fullpage ad that needs to be scrolled down to be closed. It was probably not worth reading anyway.

spinchange 8y ago
The interstitial did not spark joy.

rsync 8y ago

“People ask me about the positive side of clutter and I say, ‘There isn’t any positive side.’” This is incorrect, of course. I dislike clutter and I personally maintain a relatively clutter-free existence but of course there is a trade-off to be made between short term expediency and lack of clutter. Understanding this trade-off has been helpful to me - especially in designing and acquiring living spaces. Here is an example: My current office space requires two rooms. However, I went out of my way to find a suite with three rooms - the third of which was not, and continues to not, be necessary. What this "buffer space" allows me to do is stage, or cache, incoming items and/or projects while allowing me to make full (clutter-free) use of the necessary two rooms without interruption. Running my office without a third room would be like running a CPU without a cache - it is perfectly workable and there's no reason it can't be done - but it requires immediate, real-time interruption of work to maintain the empty (clutter-free) pipeline (really stretching the CPU analogy here, but you get the idea).

Jimpulse 8y ago
This is a wonderful analogy and a great idea. We just did a bunch of cleaning and organizing for a holiday party. A place for everything and everything in it's place kind of thing. I've never thought of dedicated space to serve as a cache to prevent the clutter from affecting the rest of the space.
dustinmoorenet 8y ago
I think you are confusing what the article means by clutter. You don't keep things in the third room that are unnecessary. It is just that spending time organizing them in a system that would appear visually de-cluttered would be a waste of time. Your third room might eventually need to be cleaned out once your cache gets full of things that, for one reason or another, you don't need anymore.
closeparen 8y ago
You can think of clutter as a ratio of stuff to space... adding space is one way to deal with it. Just not one that’s practical for most people without major life upheavals like moving house.
8y ago

kriro 8y ago

I own an English version of her book and recently bought a German copy to give as a gift for Christmas. Strange as it may sound, even though I don't really like the "style of the method" it's very efficient. Thanking the items and the whole sparking of joy are a bit over the top for me and chapter 5 is by and large too spiritual for my taste. I toss the stuff away without any parting words and joy for me is more a "is it useful" or "do I really need this" (which is pretty much what she has in mind anyways). What I consider pure gold is: * Dumping everything on the floor and going through that mountain because it shows you very clearly how much stuff you have * All the advice on folding. I actually enjoy the folding and storing now because I know it's more neat overall. I vastly prefer the vertical shirts to a stack now. I probably wouldn't have considered rethinking the old stack of stuff if it wasn't for the book * Giving items a home of sorts is also a good overall concepts. I have caught myself thinking "this item is out of place, let me quickly return it to its home" * Going by category instead of location...really helps me get started/keep tidying On a related note, I found the Netflix series surprisingly underwhelming/repetitive. The most useful parts were the folding explanations. tl;dr: MK's stuff is great, I'd recommend the book to everyone :)

Tomte 8y ago

I've always dismissed her stuff as one of those pseudo-spiritual neo-philosophies that mix a bit of Eastern wisdom with platitudes and sell it to affluent Westerners in search of meaning. Talk about Baader-Meinhof effect: Just yesterday I spontaneously picked up the book on Kindle, and I'm blown away. It is so much more. Yes, there is a lot of marketing behind it, of course. But I also sense an honesty in it that has already semi-convinced me to actually do it! And just a second ago I peeked into the Google Talk video and saw that she doesn't speak English? If this was a marketing stunt, she would have learned English (or the publisher would have found another figurehead). I actually admire Marie Kondo quite a bit.

pureliquidhw 8y ago
I really liked how the book comes with no strings attached. Everything you need is in that one small book. No subscription, no rich dad poor dad XVII: buy a cheap house and flip it trash. Just one book to help simplify life. Might come across as a Kondo shill, the type of which I have called out elsewhere on HN, so I accept any berating due. I do recommend getting it from a local Library, watching the show, or just find a recap online!
spookthesunset 8y ago
You should do it. It can sometimes be pain in the ass and it takes a long time. It took us several months to finish, during the process your house will be a huge mess. We donated bags and bags and bags of stuff. It is truly amazing how much crap you can unthinkingly acquire. In the end it was totally worth the trouble. Get the book and make sure to give it a full read-through before starting. The order you do things matters quite a bit.
PascLeRasc 8y ago
Yesterday I was thinking about how we only notice stuff relevant to our interests after we get into them, thanks for putting a name to it!
espressomachiat 8y ago
>But I also sense an honesty in it that has already semi-convinced me to actually do it! This subtle honesty is incredibly persuasive

ergest 8y ago

Messiness is highly correlated with creativity. People greatly preferred convention in the tidy room and novelty in the messy room. [1] [1] https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/its-not-mess-its-creativity.html?_r=0 https://www.nytimes.com/2013/09/15/opinion/sunday/its-not-me...

nerdface 8y ago
Did you read the research paper? > Three experiments tested the novel hypotheses that orderly environments lead people toward tradition and convention, whereas disorderly environments encourage breaking with tradition and convention—and that both settings can alter preferences, choice, and behavior Drawing conclusions from a single research paper referenced from an _opinion_ piece correlating messiness to alterations in choice and behavior in no way discounts the benefits of a clutter-free environment.

pmarreck 8y ago

Is the video not playing for anyone else?

xutopia 8y ago
It's just a trailer for the show. This small japanese woman walks in people's homes with a huge smile and helps them organize their stuff. Houses are mostly full of piles of unneeded things and there are many cutscenes of people crying over getting rid of some things with sentimental value (deceased husband's clothes for example). Most of the conversation in this thread is about the content of the article. The video was just for context.

danjc 8y ago

Marie's process is basically Map, then Reduce - for your home.

throwaway713 8y ago

> Decisional procrastinators report that they have too much clutter, which interferes with their quality of life, and clutter, in turn, is the best predictor of procrastination. Hmm... n=1 anecdote, but I hate clutter and lead a minimalist lifestyle yet procrastinate quite a bit.

tbirrell 8y ago

Throwing stuff out is hard to do if you are poor or were raised poor. Everything you save now does not have to be bought later. There is a potential use for anything and everything, so you might as well keep it. Granted, at a certain point the cost of the storage facility exceeds the amount saved, but the mindset is still there. Even now, as well off as I am, I tend to collect things (and by extension, clutter) because I can see the potential need for something in the future. I've been trying to overcome this mindset and slim down my possessions to the things I need and the few sentimental items I have, but it's not easy at all. If someone else came into my house and started trying to clean up, I'd probably lose my mind (admittedly for a few unrelated reasons as well, but largely because of this mindset)

pureliquidhw 8y ago
Might be worth watching an episode of the show to better understand what Kondo's process is. She doesn't clean or work some one off magic. She teaches 5(?) core lessons to help maintain tidiness. She doesn't excavate their piles of stuff for them.
- perfmode 8y ago
  I've found that 80% of the Kondo process has been discarding items. That's just my personal take.
  - pureliquidhw 8y ago
    Perhaps, but it is the individual who throws things out, not her. That's the distinction I was making.
ansible 8y ago
Yep. When I have the urge to keep something, I ask myself if I have definite plans for it. If I do, great! And that helps decide where it will go. Otherwise, it goes into the donation box, recycling, etc.

oarabbus_ 8y ago

On the flipside “If a cluttered desk is a sign of a cluttered mind, of what, then, is an empty desk a sign?” – Albert Einstein

ttarabula 8y ago
Though I agree that there's a reductionist aspect to this declutter thinking, I've always thought the answer to this question is "an ordered mind", which is very different from an empty mind of course.
- derefr 8y ago
  I think the implication was "an empty mind." Picture not a cleared-off tabletop, but an office desk with drawers where both the desktop and the drawers are empty.
lern_too_spel 8y ago
https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/02/clutter/ https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/09/02/clutter/
perilunar 8y ago
An empty mind. Buddhists and Taoists value it, even it westerners don't.

RcouF1uZ4gsC 8y ago

Given the housing prices in the Bay Area, comparing the joy you get from something with the cost to store it, can really help with decluttering. I live in a smallish apartment, and was tempted to rent some extra storage for stuff like holiday decorations and other stuff used seasonally. Then I realized at $100/month for the extra storage, it is cheaper for me to buy the seasonal stuff every year and then when I am done with it to throw away/recycle it.

ThrustVectoring 8y ago

Fair warning for people with ADD/ADHD or otherwise struggle with organization: removing clutter is a different thing than hiding away everything so that the room is magazine-photograph ready. Being able to use your environment to give you visual reminders of various outstanding tasks and statuses is an incredibly important coping technique for people with executive function issues. Like, I have a bunch of open wire shelves for storing the bulk of my groceries - otherwise, I tend to literally forget that I have something, and I won't notice when I get low or run out of things. It's ugly as hell, but it's a functional ugly, and dropping functionality to make things pretty is not really a good idea IMO.

Obi_Juan_Kenobi 8y ago
This also highlights why it's so helpful to eliminate clutter; the things you see are the things that matter. When I open my fridge, I don't see amorphous 'stuff'; I've got leftovers one and two here, extra ingredients that need to be used there and there, and the rest is staples that remain there and get replaced as needed. Anything that doesn't fit that gets tossed. If I can't pick it up and come up with a plan for it, it goes in the bin. If it's a longer-term plan, it gets noted on a list stuck to the door. ezpz I waste less food now, and have less stress about meal planning. Pantry is similar; at this point I can just glance at a shelf and sense whether I'm low on something.
- ThrustVectoring 8y ago
  Oh nice, sticking the note on the door is really useful for that sort of thing. But yeah, the key insight is to make your environment as useful as possible for the goals and life you want to have.