If you have a Netflix account, chances are you’ve seen Tidying Up With Marie Kondo somewhere on your feed. If you spend any time on social media, you may have seen a Twitter argument brewing. At question: whether Kondo advocates throwing away all your books. Short answer: she doesn’t. (Kondo advocates rehoming the. books you’ve never read or won’t read again.)
Marie Kondo reignited the ongoing conversation about how we deal with clutter. But it’s always important to remember that, whenever we talk about clutter, we’re talking about privilege.
If you’re able to make choices about what you need, you’re already in a better position than those who operate on a different system of choices. For them, the central question is not “Do I need this?” Rather, the question is “I don’t need this right now, but am I likely to need this at some point in the future? If I do, will I be able to afford to replace it?”
I come from a family of people who didn’t like to throw anything away. Both of my parents grew up during the Great Depression. They grew up in homes where food was scarce and hand-me-downs were the only clothes they owned. Throughout his life, my father would stop in his tracks and pick up a stray bolt or screw he’d spotted in the middle of a parking lot. He filled a garage with repurposed baby food jars organizing those treasures.
No one used to call that kind of behavior hoarding–it was frugality, or conservation, or something equally honorable. I grew up thinking it was a little excessive, but mostly harmless. Enter TV shows like Hoarders, which contribute to our sense that holding on to stuff is bad behavior. Decluttering becomes yet another way to separate Us from Them: the good people who regularly get rid of things and the bad people who, for whatever reasons, don’t.
If someone has a house filled with broken appliances, perhaps that’s because replacements are out of the question–but the hope of an affordable repair is not. And those of us who can afford to declutter conveniently ignore the fact that disposing of excess doesn’t eliminate it. Rather, it passes our clutter along to a new location. Whether that’s a landfill or a resale shop doesn’t matter. The point is, we no longer have to claim it as our own.
Additionally, most of us don’t think about the wealth our clutter represents; we just think of it as a burden that needs to be managed. So there’s good management–charitable donation, or storage somewhere out of public view–and bad management–piles of stuff. Marie Kondo suggests approaching those piles by thinking about what makes you happy. I’ve only watched a few episodes of her Netflix show, but I’ve been impressed with her lack of judgement. The only question she asks is, “Does this item bring you joy?” If what makes you happy is several closets filled with clothes, she’s not there to tell you that you don’t need them. She’ll just show you how to store them more efficiently.
Part of the response people are having to Kondo is, I think, wrapped up with our ideas about “bad” and “good” consumerism. The “bad” consumer joins the crowd lined up for a sale, looking for a deal–they seem desperate to accumulate stuff. It’s not hard to connect that “bad consumer” with the person who then has piles of belongings in their home. “Good” consumers, by comparison, aren’t attached to stuff. They laugh at Black Friday videos on the TV news and say “I don’t need a new TV badly enough to deal with that.”
I’m guilty of being that “good” consumer. And although I have, on occasion, commented on the fact that those Black Friday sales make Christmas possible for some families who are struggling to make ends meet, that didn’t stop me from laughing at news videos about them. I’m ashamed to admit this now, but it’s true.
The fact is, many of the people willing to brave those sale crowds and long lines aren’t wealthy. If they have homes filled with stuff, it may well be stuff they’re holding onto for good reason. They’re trying to assemble a life that makes them happy, holding out hope that broken things can someday be repaired. The idea that downsizing is the only virtuous way to deal with piles of stuff is the product of privileged thinking. It means you believe there is no risk attached to losing what you have right now.
I’m going to be thinking very differently about the stuff in my house as I continue to watch Kondo’s series and consider how to deal with what I have in my house. I’m definitely going to be thinking twice before I bring more stuff in. It’s time for me to start thinking about clutter as a mark of abundance–and it’s time to start thinking about how to manage that abundance in a better way.
If my clutter isn’t bringing me joy, it certainly isn’t doing anyone else any good.
I
1 Comment
Some of my “clutter” is a hedge against future want. I keep stuff because I might need it in the future and might not have enough money to buy another (fill in the blank). Some of it, like documents I invested a lot of resources to collect for research projects I wanted to, or felt that I must, do, represents resources already spent. I know in my heart that I will never finish the research. I don’t even want to finish the research. The piles of paper, however, represent precious resources that were invested when I didn’t have many resources. I gave books that a bought in Russia to friends who are still specialists; some of the books ended up in Duke’s library. Photocopies of modern documents got recycled. I think I kept some photocopies of 18th-century documents, just for the memories. It hurt so much to throw these things away, but I felt lighter once I no longer saw them daily. It was a good decision to stop reminding myself that investments don’t always pan out.