Marie Kondo and the craze for minimalism (2020)
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Second function I think is also pretty bad is as a sort of neurotic attempt to impose order or self-optimize, Marie Kondo tells you where every towel goes and then all your stress goes away. In some cultures you'd have a feng shui consultant come and rearrange your furniture and the western secular version is hiring the minimalism assistant.
In that sense I think people are mostly consumers of minimalism as a replacement for whatever else they were consuming, it's not actually about cutting useless stuff out which doesn't need an *-ism because it's a banal wisdom you find in every religious book on page 2.
Other example of this phenomenon btw is note-taking apps. There appears to be a non-trivial amount of people who are so obsessed with the process of note-taking they spend more time optimizing note-taking than they take actual notes, or do something to write about.
Yes! This and the "life management systems" that seem to be a popular trend on HN, seem to ignore the fact that people with messy lives are often just doing more than people who spend all their time cleaning up loose ends. At a certain point there is no value to cleanliness if there isn't any increased productivity to show for it.
"Productivity" isn't the only value that matters.
If your local friend came over and said “clean up your shit” you’d just ignore them. But when Marie Kondo asks what items spark joy (with some subtext of eastern wisdom) - suddenly it’s statusy to listen.
Western people have been joining dumb cults and gurus for decades for similar reasons, at least this variation is less harmful than average.
There is a balance of minimalism and buying/keeping everything.
That’s very much not what she does. Her entire method is based on teaching people to let go of things they know they don’t need but are holding on to for reasons that basically amount to either self-delusion or inability to let go of the past. All the stuff about how to fold your clothes is just organizing tips that are tangential to the central thrust of her advice. She spends the vast majority of her time coaching people into various ways of disentangling their stuff from the emotional or sentimental feelings they have attached to that stuff. That’s what alleviates the stress, not being bogged down by the collected cruft of older versions of yourself.
Almost all criticisms I’ve read of her method seem to be levied by people who never bothered to read her book and are working off some generic assumptions about what “minimalism” means.
You lost me here, as most vegans are not wealthy, and in the US have approximately the same income as non-vegans on average. (A simple google search will point to many studies which refute your statement)
https://www.statista.com/statistics/738868/vegan-vegetarian-...
Caste discrimination and trying to snuff out lower caste members by seeing who observes a vegan diet is prevalent in Hindu communities because it happens to be the case that Brahmins observe vegetarianism much more strictly.
Also important, class and income aren't the same thing. Your bohemian artist who lives only off ethically sourced food and earns half as much as the meat-eating, smoking blue collar union guy is broke, but not poor.
I struggle to see that as a marker for status as you describe it—purity. Instead I’m reminded of something the author Seth Goden says a lot, people like us do things like this.
I think there is a difference.
This obsession predates apps. Even decades ago when I was in school, you'd find a subset of students who were obsessed by the note taking process itself -- they would have incredibly organized notebooks with ink in different colors, beautiful renditions of diagrams from the chalkboard or textbook, etc. Often they were far from the most successful students on exams though.
“Simplicity hides complexity, and Marie Kondo sucks, and 2010s minimalist blogging sucked, and Apple sucks for removing the headphone jack, and the internet cables in the sea are messy.”
C’mon. This is just poorly written and a bunch of scattershot ideas.
It’s always a tug-of-war between owning too much and not enough — and I’m a big proponent of purges every 18 months. The half-life for most of the stuff we own is much less than a decade. Did Marie Kondo market her book? Yeah. Does she have some good ideas? Yeah. Should you be a minimalist zealot? No.
People who own "everything", including owning a house, plenty of belongings, a car et al, are more happy to pursue minimalism.
People who own "nothing", including renting a house, not much in the way of belongings or a car, are more likely to pursue maximalism.
I think what we can establish from it is that people want different things at different times of life in different circumstances. What suits a young person who loves to travel doesn't necessarily suit someone with a family of their own.
What demographic do you fall under?
Renting does not imply a shoebox apartment or a mediocre house in the suburbs.
I´ve moved something like 12 times in my life, as a kid, as a young adult, maried man with kids, now divorced one with shared custody. I've lived in studios, appartments, houses, most rented but 2 owned. My conclusion is whatever space you have you might end up using all of it and only because it is available, not because you are using all that shit.
I got back to renting close to a large city center because I wanted to get rid of cars and be able to go anywhere with my bicycle, have the kids walk to school , to their friends place or outside without me having to drive them left and right. Leaving in family do not mean you need so much things/space, hobbies don't have to require space. Also a lot of things can be shared with neighbors.
However my work laptop takes quite a beating from daily commute, work travel, etc and usually winds up needing a repair every one or two years. I probably need a hard case, but I guess there’s a bit of moral hazard when work has AppleCare for all the laptops.
For instance: owning a 10 years old thinkpad running st and a window manager as your main computer signals very highly among the right circles. The difference is they call excess as bloat.
Still I don't consider I am living in minimalism because I am not living alone and I leave alongside a ton of shit from my gf and kids. The living room is basically my only minimalist space in the appartment.
Minimalism, the rich people kind, is what happens when you've sampled the limits of various things and realize nothing will make you care about 95% of them. So you discard that 95% without any risk of FOMO because you've been there and done that. This is the peace of mind that allows them to focus their time and money on the 5% of things that do matter to them. These kinds of minimalists don't have much stuff, but what they do have tends to be extremely high quality and functional. It is a difference between economic minimalism and domain minimalism.
The trajectory from forced minimalism to maximalism back to intentional minimalism is not going to be inexpensive for most people. Like many people, I followed this trajectory to its logical conclusion. Looking back, it isn't obvious to me that it is possible to skip the maximalist step. It provides critical context that allows someone to understand where not to minimalize, which will be different for every person.
Someone once told me that there are some homeless people in Berkeley who actually have trust funds but find the homeless experience liberating. Not sure how true that is.
But the funds come with strings: stop doing drugs, stop being gay, go in to the family business, etc.
The liberation is having an autonomous life from controlling family, not the act of being homeless.
You think you don't smell bad.
1. Are you buying for future need and enjoyment, or is the act of buying the enjoyment you crave?
2. Are those things in storage realistically going to see any use in the next year, or do you simply hope they will?
She's not preaching minimalism, or any particular aesthetic at all. She's just saying to really think about your stuff and consider whether it's actually either useful to you or something you like. If it's neither, then consider whether you really need it.
But that's up to the individual. If they find they like or need their spaces filled with things, great. If they like a minimalist space, also great. Whatever works for them.
She just urges you to seriously think about your possessions and your living space, because it's so easily to mindlessly accumulate without really considering how you want to live.
Plainly the author, from his writing style, does not.
both say there is more meaning from less stuff, but the latter is less of everything while the former is more of "less stuff you don't care about"
Objects don't have to be imbued with special meaning all the time.
But to be fair, consider a form of mindfulness called negative visualization. In other words how would you feel if you lose everything (say in a fire). If you had no comb, and your hair were a tangled mess would you feel the opposite of joy?
Likewise there’s almost certainly stuff you wouldn’t replace if your house burned down. Maybe you bought a blender or weights for a long forgotten New Years resolution that’s now gathering dust. That’s what Kondo wants you to discard.
Not living a clutered life is of course beneficial. One can get the 80/20 benefits by doing an anual clearing of old unused stuff. But that's just normal and brings no sense of superiority, no chance to brag, to share on social media or to form religious like groups.
Common sense minimalism (or if you want to be a smartass "minimal minimalism") also does not sell books, seminars, consulting, etc. It's the same as Agile or healthy eating or whatever else system. It becomes ridiculous by being marketed.
Of course when I meet friends living in small urban apartments in Europe they often reflect longingly on the Subaran American lifestyle with its home theater rooms, endless garages etc…For everyone else I’d recommend checking out Clutterbug: http://clutterbug.com This is the organizing system featured in HGTV’s Hot Mess House.
(Full disclosure: I am related to the founder of Clutterbug as well)
I slowly lost interest because minimalist communities had an unhealthy put object count above practicality. It became "the minimum" instead of "just the right amount".
Minimalist content creators also hit a wall when their practices were at odds with affiliate-based monetisation. It's hard to pocket a commission without selling something.