And when we do not diagnose the cause of our clutter problem, we are bound to repeat it. It rarely causes us to evaluate the motivations within that caused the clutter to build in the first place. The filter may improve the peacefulness of our surroundings, but it does little to bend the trajectory of our lives. That’s why we leave with so many of them in our shopping carts.ģ. After all, when we’re standing in the department store, many things we pick up spark joy. Unfortunately, the question “Does it spark joy?” does little to rewire our thinking in that regard. Once we overcome the pull of consumption in our lives, we are free to pursue other passions. Owning less is great, but wanting less is even better. Kondo’s suggested focus does not cull our consumeristic tendencies. In fact, recent research points to the biological fact that the best way to discover happiness is to help bring it about in someone else’s life.Ģ. Unfortunately, when the predominant question in our mind is “Does this make me happy?” we routinely fall short of actually realizing our happiness. We place our own happiness above everything else and continue to define it in terms of our possessions. Specifically, we get three things wrong when we evaluate our possessions only by asking whether they spark joy or not.ġ. Yet I can’t help but bristle at the phrasing because the question “Does it spark joy?” may actually rob tidying up of its fullest potential in our lives. And we couldn’t be happier now that we have more money, more time, and more energy for the things that matter most.Īlong the way, I’ve seen how Kondo’s trademark filter has prompted significant decluttering efforts both here and abroad. Today we live in a smaller house with only a third of the possessions we used to have. And right then I had a life-changing realization:Įxcess possessions do not bring extra happiness into life even worse, they distract us from the things that do! My family became converts to minimalism in 2008 after I wasted a beautiful Saturday morning cleaning out my garage, and a neighbor, seeing my frustration, made the casual comment “Maybe you don’t need to own all that stuff.” As I surveyed the heap of dusty things piled up in my driveway, out of the corner of my eye I noticed my son playing alone on the swing set in the backyard. The de-clutter, de-own movement is rapidly catching on, as evidenced, for example, by the popularity of Tiny Houses and the growth of organizations such as the National Association of Professional Organizers and the National Association of Senior Move Managers. IKEA chief Steve Howard may have let a secret slip when he said that in the western world we’ve reached “ peak home furnishings.” We live in a society where families are chronically stressed, tired, and rushed, with our excessive possessions compounding (if not creating) the problems. We’re at material overload and it isn’t fun like it looks in the commercials. Meanwhile, home organization, trying to find places for all our excess belongings, is now an $8 billion industry. About 25 percent of two-car garages don’t have room to park even one car inside them, and still one out of every 11 American households rents off-site storage-the fastest-growing segment of the commercial real estate industry over the past four decades. Most homes contain more televisions than people. Over the same period, the size of the average American home has nearly tripled, and today that average home contains about 300,000 items. In America, we consume twice as many material goods as we used to 50 years ago. Let me begin by saying that, to me, any voice calling us to own fewer possessions is a welcome voice. Surely, in Kondo’s simple question was the razor to slice through indecision about what to keep and what to toss when pursuing a simpler lifestyle. Suddenly, it seemed like everyone who was flirting with the notion of decluttering their homes began talking about joy-sparks. If not, then So long, mustard-colored cardigan with the leather buttons. Does an item in your possession give you a little thrill when you hold it in your hands? If so, hang on to it. That was the criterion Kondo proposed for deciding whether to keep something. When decluttering expert Marie Kondo published her ground-breaking book, The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, hordes of grateful, stuff-encumbered readers around the world seized particularly on her question “Does it spark joy?”
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