31 ms·

Marie Kondo betrays her whole premise by launching e-commerce store full of junk

122 points by ilamont 7y ago

spark28 7y ago
Maybe she should have a nicer 'minimalist' trash can available to buy on her site ...
valley-green 7y ago
Having a lot of money sparks joy for Marie Kondo.
vslira 7y ago
To be fair, I think her shtick is throwing useless stuff away, not avoiding acquiring it in the first place (because if you didn't have, you wouldn't need to discard it). With this new store, she profits from both ends of the junk lifecycle.
jameslk 7y ago
Throw away crap so you can make room to buy NEW crap? Genius. That sounds like an idea straight from SV
signalsmith 7y ago
I've seen the question raised whether the "minimalism" (in terms of not owning much) often attributed to Marie Kondo is actually an accurate representation of what she says. The alternative interpretation being something more like "mindful ownership". I'm in that second camp, slightly confused by people saying things like "Marie Kondo thinks I shouldn't own more than 20 books" or whatever, because that wasn't what I understood. The point is to think about whether that number of books is an effective use of your living space - and the answer can be yes. So yeah, an online store seems a little odd, but by this point my default position on anything M-K related is "take a second and make sure this isn't misrepresenting her views". Maybe a little shop full of neat things that Marie Kondo likes is... fine? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
- brightball 7y ago
  Kondo summarized: "If it doesn't bring you joy, throw it out."
- baddox 7y ago
  I get what you're saying, but it also seems like a bit of a stretch to describe her "philosophy" as nothing more than "own anything that you like." It would be odd if a popular advocate of healthy dieting opened a store selling a bunch of addictive junk food, and people jumped in and claimed that the person's philosophy is really just "mindful eating" and that if you think about what diet will make you happy, the answer might be a bunch of addictive junk food, and maybe that's fine!
  - criddell 7y ago
    > it also seems like a bit of a stretch to describe her "philosophy" as nothing more than "own anything that you like." That's not really what he said. Mindful ownership isn't "anything you like".
- kaybe 7y ago
  I agree. It seems perfectly in line to get rid of all the things you actually don't like (but failed to notice in daily life) and replace them with things that make you happy.
  - TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
    Do the items in this store come with a guarantee they'll make you happy? If they don't, how can anyone be sure they won't end up in the "Random crap I bought for no good reason and never really wanted or needed" pile?
    - HenryBemis 7y ago
      They don't "make you happy", they "spark joy" :P In all serioursness, after having "studied" the Minimalists, Marie Kondo, and having read plenty of Stoics' works, they all (more or less) point to the same direction (in my interpretation): lead the life YOU want. Don't get carried away in owning what others mandate, but what you need, don't do what others want you do but only what fulfills you, etc. I tell my friends that I avoid things (items) that change my state. I want ME to change my state. I want people to change my state (to the positive preferably). A laptop won't make me happy. Skyping with friends via the laptop will. A pile of books is only useful as one uses it. Having a bookcase filled with books I will never read again won't make me happy. Giving them away and keeping a one-in-one-out system will. (at least for me). Piles can be as good as non-piles can be. It's all with what we do with them :)
octokatt 7y ago
Went through the e-commerce site they reference. Besides spiritualist tools like tuning forks (useless to some, some people dig it, I try not to hate on fandoms of any flavor), I wouldn't call anything in there completely useless. Maybe overpriced, but overpriced, high quality, purposefully minimalistically designed items are a staple now. Given the number of questions you can find on /r/minimalism of "what is the most minimalistic toothbrush", this is mostly harmless in the way capitalism tends to be. The store is for people trying to deal with their anxiety by adjusting their environment to be more like a luxury spa/hygge cottage in the Alps. At the point where buying things from her website sounds awesome, I'm guessing you've already read the books and gotten something out of them.
danharaj 7y ago
Marie Kondo's main criterion for keeping stuff is whether it makes you happy to have it. "Does this spark joy?" It has nothing to do with the utility of the items in question.
- Blackstone4 7y ago
  Does it spark joy?!? I don't have a toliet brush because I find it joyful...it's a utility...
  - rs23296008n1 7y ago
    Because I own a toilet brush I feel a tiny amount of joy each time I don't have to use my bare hands to clean the toilet. Your preference may be different and that's ok.
    - drak0n1c 7y ago
      Interesting digression: In Japan there was a recent fad of cleaning toilets with bare hands. A sort of hyper-stoic discipline exercise. It's not as big as western media makes it out to be, the story mainly revolved around a volunteer group that cleans public toilets with their hands. https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/the-tao-of-toilet-cleaning https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/the-tao-o...
      - deleted 7y ago
        [deleted]
  - Tomte 7y ago
    And, surprise, she discusses this exact retort to a simplistic summary of her method in the book. It's fascinating how many people in this thread have never read anything she wrote, take a pithy sentence some other non-reader put forward as an accurate representation of what she stands for, and then "rebuts" her with the most glaringly obvious counter-example.
jgeada 7y ago
Minimalism is something only the truly rich can actually afford to do: https://priceonomics.com/post/45447777955/is-minimalism-just-for-rich-people https://priceonomics.com/post/45447777955/is-minimalism-just... Money is the ultimate backup for missing things or for things that are needed infrequently. Regular people can't afford to keep minimal, once you have paid for the item, it needs to be kept for future uses, even if those are very infrequent.
- vorpalhex 7y ago
  Owning things comes with its own cost - the cost of storage, care, and upkeep. The more complex the item, typically the more expensive it is to store it decently. Getting rid of things and keeping a smaller amount of possessions can be cost saving - but it does require you to invest in better possessions. If you're only going to keep one pair of scissors on hand, you want to be pretty sure those scissors will do anything you need and not fall apart. That's not necessarily more expensive overall but it can require more initial investment - and that can be the rub for many people.
  - TeMPOraL 7y ago
    > Owning things comes with its own cost - the cost of storage, care, and upkeep. Care/upkeep is usually very minimal, especially with "dumb" items. As for storage, this is an inflexible cost. Your apartment has a fixed surface area for which you pay, and on a day-to-day basis, you only manage how dense you pack it with stuff. If you decide to throw away some stuff, you can't just shrink your house down and pay smaller rent. This is why poor people tend to own a lot of stuff - because it's really hard to fill your living space to capacity with things, which makes stuff ownership effectively free on the margin.
    - perl4ever 7y ago
      "it's really hard to fill your living space to capacity with things" This depends on the size of your living space, which varies greatly. Is it really that difficult to fill a 900 sq ft apartment, assuming you don't want to put a lot of boxes in the middle of your living room? I notice that there are a lot of storage rental places, including major chains.
sorenhansen 7y ago
It's certainly stuff that I would never purchase, but if they spark joy for her, it seems perfecty aligned with her philosophy. Tastes differ. Meh.
coldtea 7y ago
She betrayed her whole premise when she did a 10 paragraph idea into a whole TV series, books, and so on...
makz 7y ago
One person’s junk is another person’s treasure
newnewpdro 7y ago
George Carlin on Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac
JoeAltmaier 7y ago
TO rehash an old line: I put her book in my hand, and it did not bring me joy. So I binned it.
tom-thistime 7y ago
She's not buying junk. She's selling. If that's not walking the walk, I don't know what is.
nabdab 7y ago
She’s pragmatic and has to somehow capitalize on her success. And the very reason everyone owns so much crap is because this is the way you can easily do that. Selling cheap shit to the masses. She was never preaching an end to consumerism or actual social change. She just had a cute pitch for a role that could provide her fame so she could get a payday. No doubt tons of fans of hers will fill their houses with her crap-ware and the irony will be lost on them. But what does it matter? They’ll buy it because they want to express their alignment with her image through their spending. Just like they bought an exercise bike because they wanted to seem fit. And then they threw it out because she told them it was what they should do and they listened and now she’s saying buy tuning forks and they’ll listen.
krick 7y ago
I'm not judging, but I'm honestly surprised we care what Marie Kondo does and how she betrays her whole premise. Sure, I heard about her, but is she considered to be a respectable lifestyle guru in USA now, or what? I thought, she is just some media-entertaiment celebrity for housewives, and it's not like it is unusual for a celebrity (or anybody else, for that matter) to betray his whole premise about 500 times a day...
- deleted 7y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
deleted 7y ago
[deleted]
mrperson112 7y ago
She never claimed to be a minimalist. She only claimed to be tidy.
tim333 7y ago
The Guardian covers the story entertainingly https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/nov/19/therapeutic-tuning-fork-unnecessary-item-marie-kondo-queen-of-tidying-online-shop https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/nov/...
AAM2RF 7y ago
I honestly don't get the problem. If they had read the book, it should be obvious that throwing away "useless"(as in utility) stuff isn't the point of it. Sure, Marie presses hard, but she doesn't compel you to throw away things you like, just the stuff you think you like or you liked or may like in the future. In general, things that have no purpose being in the house. Calling her store a site full of junk shows just how much some people got out of the book. I mean, she is just selling some novelties and if something on there sparks joy for someone, that's their business. This utility only, multitool, male fantasy kind of minimalism that people want to believe Marie is all about is honestly very annoying.
- deusofnull 7y ago
  yeah, i think its mostly just a humorous title.
- noneeeed 7y ago
  It's the same simplistic interpretation of financial frugality, or just plain old sound money management. People like to present is as hair-shirts and gruel, and depriving yourself for no reason other than the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. But the whole point of good money management is so that you have the money to spend on the stuff you really care about, rather than wasting it on that which you don't.
ouid 7y ago
>Sure, nobody should fault Kondo for being a capitalist, and props to her for introducing some Eastern spirituality staples to Western sensibilities. Why on earth not?
rchaud 7y ago
This is to be expected, it's part and parcel of capitalism. If you have an audience, you will eventually feel the pressure to sell something to them while the iron is hot, as maintaining an audience is work after all. It's the same as Youtubers pitching phone skins and makeup brands. Or bloggers pitching their books or filling their posts with affiliate links?
adolph 7y ago
Included in the collection is a Lego container--now thats something to spark joy and be tidy about it. https://shop.konmari.com/collections/tidying-organization/products/konmari-tidying-room-copenhagen-lego-storage-brick https://shop.konmari.com/collections/tidying-organization/pr...
riskneutral 7y ago
Why is the author picking on the tuning fork? The author even quotes Kondo explaining why the tuning fork has importance for her. Is it just that the author does not agree with the explanation?
- yellowapple 7y ago
  Probably because it and the accompanying crystal are 1) marked up 100% relative to the comparable equivalents on e.g. Amazon and 2) seem to be aimed squarely at homeopathic "alternative" "medicine", within which 4096Hz tuning forks and quartz crystals and essential oils are all the rage. In Kondo's defense, though, at least the product descriptions stick with vague weasel words like "believed to help restore a sense of balance" instead of actually making borderline-FDA-enforceable medical claims like snake^Wessential oil peddlers do.
yellowapple 7y ago
To play Devil's Advocate: Maybe the reason why this junk is so expensive is specifically to discourage people from cluttering their lives with it? Some of the more-obviously-useful stuff is more reasonably priced (organizers, soap bottles, etc.; there's a markup, sure, but it ain't extreme for a "premium" brand like Marie Kondo might be trying to establish). Meanwhile, the useless-looking junk is almost universally priced high. Marie Kondo's playing a joy-sparking 4D chess game while we're here playing checkers.
huxflux 7y ago
.... But earned 150$ from me just now
ruxx 7y ago
You would have nothing that gives you no joy otherwise

122 points by ilamont 7y ago

spark28 7y ago

Maybe she should have a nicer 'minimalist' trash can available to buy on her site ...

valley-green 7y ago

Having a lot of money sparks joy for Marie Kondo.

vslira 7y ago

To be fair, I think her shtick is throwing useless stuff away, not avoiding acquiring it in the first place (because if you didn't have, you wouldn't need to discard it). With this new store, she profits from both ends of the junk lifecycle.

jameslk 7y ago

Throw away crap so you can make room to buy NEW crap? Genius. That sounds like an idea straight from SV

signalsmith 7y ago

I've seen the question raised whether the "minimalism" (in terms of not owning much) often attributed to Marie Kondo is actually an accurate representation of what she says. The alternative interpretation being something more like "mindful ownership". I'm in that second camp, slightly confused by people saying things like "Marie Kondo thinks I shouldn't own more than 20 books" or whatever, because that wasn't what I understood. The point is to think about whether that number of books is an effective use of your living space - and the answer can be yes. So yeah, an online store seems a little odd, but by this point my default position on anything M-K related is "take a second and make sure this isn't misrepresenting her views". Maybe a little shop full of neat things that Marie Kondo likes is... fine? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

brightball 7y ago
Kondo summarized: "If it doesn't bring you joy, throw it out."
baddox 7y ago
I get what you're saying, but it also seems like a bit of a stretch to describe her "philosophy" as nothing more than "own anything that you like." It would be odd if a popular advocate of healthy dieting opened a store selling a bunch of addictive junk food, and people jumped in and claimed that the person's philosophy is really just "mindful eating" and that if you think about what diet will make you happy, the answer might be a bunch of addictive junk food, and maybe that's fine!
- criddell 7y ago
  > it also seems like a bit of a stretch to describe her "philosophy" as nothing more than "own anything that you like." That's not really what he said. Mindful ownership isn't "anything you like".
kaybe 7y ago
I agree. It seems perfectly in line to get rid of all the things you actually don't like (but failed to notice in daily life) and replace them with things that make you happy.
- TheOtherHobbes 7y ago
  Do the items in this store come with a guarantee they'll make you happy? If they don't, how can anyone be sure they won't end up in the "Random crap I bought for no good reason and never really wanted or needed" pile?
  - HenryBemis 7y ago
    They don't "make you happy", they "spark joy" :P In all serioursness, after having "studied" the Minimalists, Marie Kondo, and having read plenty of Stoics' works, they all (more or less) point to the same direction (in my interpretation): lead the life YOU want. Don't get carried away in owning what others mandate, but what you need, don't do what others want you do but only what fulfills you, etc. I tell my friends that I avoid things (items) that change my state. I want ME to change my state. I want people to change my state (to the positive preferably). A laptop won't make me happy. Skyping with friends via the laptop will. A pile of books is only useful as one uses it. Having a bookcase filled with books I will never read again won't make me happy. Giving them away and keeping a one-in-one-out system will. (at least for me). Piles can be as good as non-piles can be. It's all with what we do with them :)

octokatt 7y ago

Went through the e-commerce site they reference. Besides spiritualist tools like tuning forks (useless to some, some people dig it, I try not to hate on fandoms of any flavor), I wouldn't call anything in there completely useless. Maybe overpriced, but overpriced, high quality, purposefully minimalistically designed items are a staple now. Given the number of questions you can find on /r/minimalism of "what is the most minimalistic toothbrush", this is mostly harmless in the way capitalism tends to be. The store is for people trying to deal with their anxiety by adjusting their environment to be more like a luxury spa/hygge cottage in the Alps. At the point where buying things from her website sounds awesome, I'm guessing you've already read the books and gotten something out of them.

danharaj 7y ago

Marie Kondo's main criterion for keeping stuff is whether it makes you happy to have it. "Does this spark joy?" It has nothing to do with the utility of the items in question.

Blackstone4 7y ago
Does it spark joy?!? I don't have a toliet brush because I find it joyful...it's a utility...
- rs23296008n1 7y ago
  Because I own a toilet brush I feel a tiny amount of joy each time I don't have to use my bare hands to clean the toilet. Your preference may be different and that's ok.
  - drak0n1c 7y ago
    Interesting digression: In Japan there was a recent fad of cleaning toilets with bare hands. A sort of hyper-stoic discipline exercise. It's not as big as western media makes it out to be, the story mainly revolved around a volunteer group that cleans public toilets with their hands. https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/the-tao-of-toilet-cleaning https://japantoday.com/category/features/lifestyle/the-tao-o...
    - deleted 7y ago
      [deleted]
- Tomte 7y ago
  And, surprise, she discusses this exact retort to a simplistic summary of her method in the book. It's fascinating how many people in this thread have never read anything she wrote, take a pithy sentence some other non-reader put forward as an accurate representation of what she stands for, and then "rebuts" her with the most glaringly obvious counter-example.

jgeada 7y ago

Minimalism is something only the truly rich can actually afford to do: https://priceonomics.com/post/45447777955/is-minimalism-just-for-rich-people https://priceonomics.com/post/45447777955/is-minimalism-just... Money is the ultimate backup for missing things or for things that are needed infrequently. Regular people can't afford to keep minimal, once you have paid for the item, it needs to be kept for future uses, even if those are very infrequent.

vorpalhex 7y ago
Owning things comes with its own cost - the cost of storage, care, and upkeep. The more complex the item, typically the more expensive it is to store it decently. Getting rid of things and keeping a smaller amount of possessions can be cost saving - but it does require you to invest in better possessions. If you're only going to keep one pair of scissors on hand, you want to be pretty sure those scissors will do anything you need and not fall apart. That's not necessarily more expensive overall but it can require more initial investment - and that can be the rub for many people.
- TeMPOraL 7y ago
  > Owning things comes with its own cost - the cost of storage, care, and upkeep. Care/upkeep is usually very minimal, especially with "dumb" items. As for storage, this is an inflexible cost. Your apartment has a fixed surface area for which you pay, and on a day-to-day basis, you only manage how dense you pack it with stuff. If you decide to throw away some stuff, you can't just shrink your house down and pay smaller rent. This is why poor people tend to own a lot of stuff - because it's really hard to fill your living space to capacity with things, which makes stuff ownership effectively free on the margin.
  - perl4ever 7y ago
    "it's really hard to fill your living space to capacity with things" This depends on the size of your living space, which varies greatly. Is it really that difficult to fill a 900 sq ft apartment, assuming you don't want to put a lot of boxes in the middle of your living room? I notice that there are a lot of storage rental places, including major chains.

sorenhansen 7y ago

It's certainly stuff that I would never purchase, but if they spark joy for her, it seems perfecty aligned with her philosophy. Tastes differ. Meh.

coldtea 7y ago

She betrayed her whole premise when she did a 10 paragraph idea into a whole TV series, books, and so on...

makz 7y ago

One person’s junk is another person’s treasure

newnewpdro 7y ago

George Carlin on Stuff: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

JoeAltmaier 7y ago

TO rehash an old line: I put her book in my hand, and it did not bring me joy. So I binned it.

tom-thistime 7y ago

She's not buying junk. She's selling. If that's not walking the walk, I don't know what is.

nabdab 7y ago

She’s pragmatic and has to somehow capitalize on her success. And the very reason everyone owns so much crap is because this is the way you can easily do that. Selling cheap shit to the masses. She was never preaching an end to consumerism or actual social change. She just had a cute pitch for a role that could provide her fame so she could get a payday. No doubt tons of fans of hers will fill their houses with her crap-ware and the irony will be lost on them. But what does it matter? They’ll buy it because they want to express their alignment with her image through their spending. Just like they bought an exercise bike because they wanted to seem fit. And then they threw it out because she told them it was what they should do and they listened and now she’s saying buy tuning forks and they’ll listen.

krick 7y ago

I'm not judging, but I'm honestly surprised we care what Marie Kondo does and how she betrays her whole premise. Sure, I heard about her, but is she considered to be a respectable lifestyle guru in USA now, or what? I thought, she is just some media-entertaiment celebrity for housewives, and it's not like it is unusual for a celebrity (or anybody else, for that matter) to betray his whole premise about 500 times a day...

deleted 7y ago
[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

deleted 7y ago

[deleted]

mrperson112 7y ago

She never claimed to be a minimalist. She only claimed to be tidy.

tim333 7y ago

The Guardian covers the story entertainingly https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/nov/19/therapeutic-tuning-fork-unnecessary-item-marie-kondo-queen-of-tidying-online-shop https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/nov/...

AAM2RF 7y ago

I honestly don't get the problem. If they had read the book, it should be obvious that throwing away "useless"(as in utility) stuff isn't the point of it. Sure, Marie presses hard, but she doesn't compel you to throw away things you like, just the stuff you think you like or you liked or may like in the future. In general, things that have no purpose being in the house. Calling her store a site full of junk shows just how much some people got out of the book. I mean, she is just selling some novelties and if something on there sparks joy for someone, that's their business. This utility only, multitool, male fantasy kind of minimalism that people want to believe Marie is all about is honestly very annoying.

deusofnull 7y ago
yeah, i think its mostly just a humorous title.
noneeeed 7y ago
It's the same simplistic interpretation of financial frugality, or just plain old sound money management. People like to present is as hair-shirts and gruel, and depriving yourself for no reason other than the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. But the whole point of good money management is so that you have the money to spend on the stuff you really care about, rather than wasting it on that which you don't.

ouid 7y ago

>Sure, nobody should fault Kondo for being a capitalist, and props to her for introducing some Eastern spirituality staples to Western sensibilities. Why on earth not?

rchaud 7y ago

This is to be expected, it's part and parcel of capitalism. If you have an audience, you will eventually feel the pressure to sell something to them while the iron is hot, as maintaining an audience is work after all. It's the same as Youtubers pitching phone skins and makeup brands. Or bloggers pitching their books or filling their posts with affiliate links?

adolph 7y ago

Included in the collection is a Lego container--now thats something to spark joy and be tidy about it. https://shop.konmari.com/collections/tidying-organization/products/konmari-tidying-room-copenhagen-lego-storage-brick https://shop.konmari.com/collections/tidying-organization/pr...

riskneutral 7y ago

Why is the author picking on the tuning fork? The author even quotes Kondo explaining why the tuning fork has importance for her. Is it just that the author does not agree with the explanation?

yellowapple 7y ago
Probably because it and the accompanying crystal are 1) marked up 100% relative to the comparable equivalents on e.g. Amazon and 2) seem to be aimed squarely at homeopathic "alternative" "medicine", within which 4096Hz tuning forks and quartz crystals and essential oils are all the rage. In Kondo's defense, though, at least the product descriptions stick with vague weasel words like "believed to help restore a sense of balance" instead of actually making borderline-FDA-enforceable medical claims like snake^Wessential oil peddlers do.

yellowapple 7y ago

To play Devil's Advocate: Maybe the reason why this junk is so expensive is specifically to discourage people from cluttering their lives with it? Some of the more-obviously-useful stuff is more reasonably priced (organizers, soap bottles, etc.; there's a markup, sure, but it ain't extreme for a "premium" brand like Marie Kondo might be trying to establish). Meanwhile, the useless-looking junk is almost universally priced high. Marie Kondo's playing a joy-sparking 4D chess game while we're here playing checkers.

huxflux 7y ago

.... But earned 150$ from me just now

ruxx 7y ago

You would have nothing that gives you no joy otherwise