KonMari Your Miser-i!

Oh hey,

Been a while! I'm sure you are all like, "Oh, you're still here?" That's fine, really, it's fine. It's fine, you're right. Me? Oh I've just been managing my time very poorly. But I'm getting better with that, I sort of swear!

Recently I made a $10 purchase on Amazon's Kindle store. I had an eight hour international flight and I had watched all the movies I wanted to watch on the way over (side note: Stockholm is fine but not great enough to fill seven whole days). So I purchased The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up which most people know as that book about throwing away all your personal effects except for the absolute essential that make you happy. It's kind of like the Tyler Durden Fight Club philosophy about not being owned by your possessions, but if that philosophy went on a trip to Asia to "find itself" and took meditation classes and zen'd the F out.

I mean, this Marie Kondo lady sounds pretty efficient but also maybe a bit pleased with herself? I'm picturing the lady from The Poltergeist who's like, "This house is clean" but younger and also Japanese. She legitimately loves getting rid of stuff. I mean, so do I if it means de-cluttering, but I have no monk-like aspirations to live without necessarily. Mostly, I just want more space in my NYC-sized apartment and to be less distracted by dumb things I don't need.

Do not get me wrong. Just like a good samaritan who also benefits from his or her samaritanianism, I'm totally looking forward to purging my wardrobe of all the things I never wear for various reasons and filling it with nice things from nice places — not just fast-fashion binges. Clothes that "spark joy" according to the KonMari method.

But post-closet purge, getting rid of all my Forever 21 crop tops, dumb trend-driven impulse purchases and vintage pieces that are just as useless as when their previous owner ditched them, didn't necessarily "change my life," you know? I read that I'd feel changed and whatnot and I don't know if that's happened. Maybe clothes were not my issue. Maybe space was not my issue. Maybe nothing even in the physical realm necessarily! Which got me thinking. What are other things I really wish I could KonMari in my life? You know, like, just toss all the things that don't bring joy even though they are technically useful or have some sort of "emotional" value.

Books.
This is why I got the damn Kindle in the first place. Books are great and I can totally read the shit out of them all the live long day, but they are heavy and bulky and take up space and require furniture to house them. Plus, if you aren't careful, sometimes a book will cut you. For no reason. Like a cat that didn't want to be touched but still looks so appealing anyway, you can pick up a book, turn a page and it'll just straight-up cut you just for reading it.
Oh and I'm well aware of that stupid "If you go to someone's house and they don't have books, don't fuck them" John Waters quote that's on so many refrigerator magnets and independent bookstore tote bags, and I honestly don't know if John Waters would commit to such a judge-y sentiment. What if that person is poor? What if their books were all lent to friends who never gave them back? WHY would anyone I'm bring home with a sex-agenda be thinking about my fucking book collection when they SHOULD be thinking about how to please me in bed??

Beauty Products.
This one is sort of unique to me and people in my field but I have a growing modular storage system from Muji that keeps expanding to fit all the beauty products I hoard even though I'll never get around to using all of them before they expire at all. I just can't bring myself to give away/toss the fancy shit, even if they don't necessarily perform that well. It's a problem. But like, who wants a slightly used jar of moisturizer or palette or cream blush? Apparently a lot of people.

Contacts.
Particularly ones I wish to never hear from again and their cooresponding messages/communiques that made me feel weird or iffy about them in the first place. Okay, mostly the latter. So let's just say weird messages that I don't know what I did to deserve. Blocking phone numbers is thankfully easy and quick but you'd be surprised at how simply by blocking someone's phone number they will find annoyingly easy ways to get in touch with you, sometimes in regards to why you blocked their phone number. Ugh.

Social Media.
When was the last time you scrolled your Facebook timeline or Instagram feed and were like, Wow what enriching content I'm so glad to see everyone doing wonderfully hurray for us all!
This is a big one and sort of tough because the FOMO is strong with this one. I mean, the fear of not being on social media is generally about self-isolation and missing out on what's going on and losing touch with people. But the more involved I am in the shit, the more it becomes like an Apocalypse Now pinball machine or else a round of Minesweeper (I never understood how to play that game but did it anyway a lot when I was a kid?) in which I see images and sub-posts/sub-tweets and wonder what they really mean or what is the nature of the relationship with the persons they are appearing with, etc, etc.
Or I'll see comments on things and wonder what they really mean and who they're really from and it becomes a complex web of masochism. Social Media would never survive the KonMari method (even you, Snapchat, you smug sonofabitch).

This stupid... Whatever This Goddamn Thing Is.

Okay, I am way more clever in my brain if you give my brain a 10-minute head-start to respond. And since everyone insists on having full-on serious conversations via text I'm just seeing and doing a lot of this—what even is this, this ominous gang of ellipses? Why are they so aggressive?
I'll stare at it waiting because I don't want to put away my phone only to pick it up again once I get a notification, while the other person could very well just have pressed the spacebar button, who knows. And then if it disappears without making good on its promise, making me even more ruffled or hackled or whatever.

Worst case scenario (which is most cases) it prompts me to fire off another message which is basically at that point an automated anxiety-response that is always either back-peddling or instigating or *wildcard* putting my foot in my mouth (actually, it is always this one). And then I get to obsessively re-read the stupid thing I said over and over which is always the last thing in the transcript.
Seriously, is there a way to turn this off? I hate it. You know what? Actually, everyone just CALL me from now on. I won't pick up, I'll for sure forward to voicemail but then I can email you back. That seems like a fine way to communicate to me.

Relationships.
Does it spark joy? "If so, keep it. if not, dispose of it." What are the odds that Kondo is a Tough AF Bitch, sparing no man's feelings (assuming she's cis/hetero) for the sake of ultimate clarity and a life devoid of joyless things. I like this image of a person I've never met.
I mean it's cold, but ultimately pretty reasonable, no? The time you spend with others and the people you care for most and keep close should — should!— provide joy for you, if nothing else. So if they don't (in some way? Even a little? Ehh?) they are probably not only not sparking joy in you, but also preventing you from experiencing joy elsewhere. This is definitely one of those "the math is correct but now let's see the work" scenarios. I mean, if all those dumb Are Your Friends Toxic? articles would change the language to ask whether your friends actually make you happy, I feel like it'd be way more actionable. Oust the negative with a positive, right?

I don't know, what else is there? What else can I throw away from my life in pursuit of joy? Also has anyone thought about the repercussions re: landfills with this whole KonMari trend? (Like the landfill of my brain whoaoaoaoa) Has anyone noted an uptick in landfill oversaturation (more so than they already are)? because I feel like that sort of thing is noteworthy.

Oh jeez, if the most exciting thing going on in my life right at this moment is the wholesale purging of my material possessions, WOW. I don't want to sound smug, but here I go: It feels pretty great, in a pseudo-enlightened way to get rid of stuff! So now my home can reflect just how empty I feel on the inside (JK, there's my nihilism peeking out) while I lord it over people who love complaining about nothing! Now I can actually have a whole lotta nothing to complain about — get it? See what I did there?

Ugh. I cannot even be mad at those unsubscribes.

Bye!

x Sable