Konned?

I kept hearing about getting rid of the clutter. My first reaction was that I like my stuff. It's not as though you can't walk through the rooms in my house or find a seat - unless of  course the cat is sitting on your favourite chair. There is lots of storage space and bookshelves and wardrobes and it's all good stuff.

Then I heard about the person who has made whole career of helping people get rid of stuff - bags and bags of it. I decided I needed to know what this was all about and so my fabulous local library came good with a copy of the book with the fascinating title The Life-changing magic of tidying  - by Marie Kondo.
Tidying. Magic? Really. It's kind of fun when one of my granddaughters helps me sort out my clothes or jewellery drawer but I'd hardly say it was magic. Or life-changing.
So I got to thinking about all this. Marie Kondo talks about people buying stuff they never use and having piles of clothes still in the original wrappers. That's not me.  Mind you, I do like a bargain, but only when I know I will use what I buy.

The KonMari method suggests looking at every item you own to see if you want to keep it. Only keep it if it sparks joy. Hm! Not only would that take hours on end but there are perfectly useful things that don't give me joy but I need to have - veg peelers, toothbrushes, bras... My daughter assures me that her dishwasher doesn't  exactly spark joy but she has no plans to get rid of it. Kondo would suggest she should regularly thank it for what it does. It's bad enough that my fridge beeps at me when I leave the door open, the microwave tells me it's done and her dishwasher even sings a little song when it's finished. I really don't want to engage in full blown conversation with all my useful appliances. I do talk to the cat and the budgies but that's different.

I worry about what would happen to all the history,  photos and paper and letters telling of family and community if this approach to stuff is taken. [I also worry about the way history will disappear when the format is digital. All those zillions of photos or minutes of meetings on someone's hard drive.]
As I read on, I was fascinated to discover that if I put my socks into balls and chuck them in the drawer they will be sad. I am not a big fan of socks but I draw the line at apologising to them for the way I deal with them.

Sure, our current world is overtaken with consumerism but I am a child of the depression or at least heavily influenced by my parents who lived through it. They looked at everything twice and re-used, cut down, saved, as it might come in useful. As a young Mum I used to cut down old adult clothing to make clothes for my kids. They look shocking now but so do the haircuts and skivvies. 

I finished the book with a sense of sadness. Marie Kondo said she has been a compulsive cleaner since she was a child and thinks it is because she is a middle child who never got the needed recognition from her mother, so tried to get it this way. Her book promises that her process of sorting and tidying will make me feel more confident, successful and motivated. Hm...
I was sad that she looked for fulfillment and pleasure in life in this way. It's no good relying on stuff for contentment even if it is all neatly organised.