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#Post#: 1295--------------------------------------------------
Marie Kondo, THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP... (2015)
By: agate Date: July 18, 2016, 1:23 am
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Marie Kondo, THE LIFE-CHANGING MAGIC OF TIDYING UP: THE JAPANESE
ART OF DECLUTTERING AND ORGANIZING (2015)
Marie Kondo has made a name for herself with her expertise in
helping people to solve the problems posed by having too many
belongings. She seems to have had a special gift for organizing
and decluttering since she was a little girl. This book of hers
has been a best-seller.
She insists that we should keep only those things that "spark
joy" in us when we see them. She sees the process of
decluttering as potentially transformative. She enters into an
almost personal relationship with inanimate objects, talking to
her clothes and stroking her plants. She would say that they
probably have a sort of life of their own, for she notes the
musty, underused smell and appearance of clothes and linens that
have lain on shelves without being touched for too long and
concludes that they appreciate being handled and used.
It's a bit whimsical for those who think of things as just
things but she has a point. Many of us do hang onto things we
don't need and tend to have far too many possessions. Garages
and vehicles and basements seem readily available as dumping
areas, and the average size of a house bought in the US has
increased appreciably in the last few decades.
Her methods are drastic, and I don't always agree with her. She
favors abandoning the whole idea of off-season storage of
clothes, for instance, but fails to address the problem of
moths. If woolens aren't mothproofed in some way, they are apt
to be destroyed by moths. The best way to mothproof them is to
put them away for the warmer months in sealed storage units. But
that is just my opinion.
She sees no point in saving spare buttons. I have saved buttons
all my life--not every button but those that looked as if they'd
be hard to replace or those that were special in some way. My
mother also saved buttons, and I now have her button collection
added to mine. I have used those buttons many times over the
years. A doll garment, a replacement button for some items of
clothing that had lost a button--and buttons take up very little
space.
Marie Kondo advocates tossing out all instructions connected
with newly purchased items (clocks, radios, toasters, TVs,
phones, etc.), asserting that you'll never read them anyway and
if you do need to know something you can call the company or go
online.
Here again I'd quibble. The instruction manual online isn't
always so easy to find and it may not be quite the right one for
your particular product. Calling the company is apt to lead to a
series of calls leading nowhere because you'll need to be very
skilled at describing exactly what grommet you're talking about
over the phone when you're trying to assemble a cabinet.
Still, I liked Marie Kondo. She seems cheerful and upbeat, and
her heart is in the right place. She sees the importance of
living a life free of clutter and unnecessary knickknacks. More
power to her.
#Post#: 2529--------------------------------------------------
Einstein was known for his cluttered desk...
By: agate Date: May 28, 2019, 12:43 am
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Now that Marie Kondo now has her own TV show (which I haven't
seen), maybe it's time for an update. From the BBC News (May 15,
2019), an article indicating that decluttering isn't always the
best way to go:
HTML https://bbc.in/2Mcsb0c
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