The Life-Changing Magic of Quitting Capitalism

I’m finally listening to Marie Kondo’s book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, and it is so much more than I was expecting. It is honestly one of the best anti-capitalistic manifestos I have ever read, partly because it’s deeply based in Shintoism. But also because Marie Kondo is delightful. She’s hilarious and fascinatingly obsessed with clean spaces.

However, first, I want to address the mockery and memes I’ve seen floating about. If you’ve made fun of this book without reading it, well, that’s an obvious problem. And I’d like to point out that if you jumped on the bandwagon of making fun of a Japanese woman for saying something that sounds strange or unusual to you, you probably want to give your self, your values, and your beliefs a long, hard look. Just something for you to think about. Do that work, and be better next time. And definitely go read the book if you haven’t. I’m sure there are plenty of copies at the library (which Marie would probably encourage you to use).

Marie Kondo, under the guise of cleaning, spends this entire book discussing our relationship to our things. We’ve all heard the “spark joy” part of her method: get rid of any object that doesn’t spark joy. But the philosophy and feeling behind it is wonderful. We should surround ourselves with the things that we love, and get rid of all the senseless crap that we feel compelled to buy. Also, we should stop buying the crap. That is the real secret to her method. Stop being a mindless consumer of shit, and you will be happier. Well, yes.

Even more interesting, though, is how she talks about objects, and our relationships with objects. Because we don’t value our things. Everything is too disposable, too cheap, too impulse driven, and it’s hard to value something who’s only purpose was to be bought. But still, she finds value in that, too, and says if you bought something for the joy of buying it, acknowledge that the object has served its purpose and let it go.

I should add here that she spent five years as a Shinto shrine maiden. If you’ve read anything at all about Shinto, you’ll see the influence of it in this book. It’s one of the things I love about it.

The other thing I love about it is that she makes us think about things that we don’t normally think about or consider. We don’t think about how our house feels. Or how our clothes feel. I love her idea that every object has a purpose. I love that she considers the work that went into each object. Like, this Doctor Who coffee mug I’m currently using to drink my tea. People at every step of it’s creation (and it’s mass produced, people, this isn’t an Etsy mug) had to mine clay and ship it to a factory that made these mugs (okay, so I don’t know shit about making mass produced mugs. But I picked my mug, dammit, so we’re going with this), then ship them to stores, where people display them, and then I buy it and use it. How many people touched this object? How many people contributed to it’s existence and to it’s trajectory to my desk? When we talk about sustainable consumerism, and fair trade, and ethical buying, this is the stuff we’re taking into consideration. We shouldn’t just buy ethically, we should only buy the things that truly bring us pleasure. And then we need to be responsible owners of our things. Instead of treating this mug like a mass-produced novelty mug, shouldn’t I respect it, at minimum for the labor of so many hands that went into making it?

Something to think about.

(And, full disclosure, I love my Doctor Who mug, so if it breaks, I’m totally going to kintsugi it.)

I’m also delighted that this book became so popular. Here’s a Japanese woman, discussing cleaning and Shintoism, in the least capitalistic guide to domesticity I have ever read, and people went nuts for it. How fantastic is that?

I honestly never thought I would love this book as much as I do. If I had bought a paperback version, I’d shelve it with my Zen books.

Speaking of books, I want to mention the 30 books thing. She says that 30 books is her particular number. She doesn’t force people to pare down to 30 books. She does ask you to consider your relationship to your books, which, for a book lover, is hard. But how often do you actually (re)read all of your books? It’s strange how many people latched on to this, but if you’re going to defend buying hoards of books, just know that you’re also defending the book industry, the underpayment of authors, Amazon, and commercialism. Because I doubt that every single one of your books was purchased full price from the author. Books are the greatest things in the world. And they’re still commodities. Something else to dig deep on. Libraries exist y’all. She doesn’t advocate burning books or burning down libraries. Just owning less things that you don’t enjoy to their (and your) fullest potential.

Radical, I know.