@vasta This is a very good point, excellently written. On the flip side, I can’t help but wonder though if the Kondo method is in some ways a reaction to the capitalist push to have our primary role in life be “consumer” instead of the many other rich roles that we have. There’s always a next thing that if I bought it, I’d be so much more happy and fullfilled and less stressed. And I can’t unbuy the thing, but that doesn’t mean I should keep it either. Which is all to say, I don’t think throwing and buying new later is a good answer, so much as not buying in impulse and not being chained to the things we bought that we genuinely don’t need.

@vasta I read Kondo's book and similar to @sproutlight, I saw it more as a stance against the overwhelming consumerism that has been trending for the last couple of years. When it comes to getting rid of things that don't bring you joy, I imagined a very low bar for that joy. I always saw it as getting rid of the crap that clutters your life rather than getting rid of things that may serve a purpose even if it's only for one rainy day a year. Side note, I also reuse my tea bags.

@vasta I found your article and thoughts on your grandmother and her life deeply moving. Thank you for sharing.

@vasta This resonated with me—and at some point, I need to write a longer piece with stories—but my grandparents were children of the Great Depression, and poorer ones, at that—which is in the scarcity sense a bit similar to the refugee experience, while still being rather different overall. So throughout his entire life, my grandfather kept any and every thing that could possibly be repaired, reused, repurposed, or disassembled for parts. (He used empty cereal boxes as file folders and filing cabinets, one of the more endearing repurposings.) Of course, he was not often as good at completing those plans, or they never were needed, in his last several decades, leaving us with a mountain of stuff—in the house, in the attic, in the cellar, in the garage, in the garage cellar—to dispose of. (On the other hand, my father has a collection of 19th/early 20th-century farming implements, I have a collection of 19th/early 20th-century housewares and a 1940s lamp, and my brother has the throttle(?) from an ill-fated B-17 that my grandfather warned the officer-in-charge was not air-worthy, so all the collecting did also preserve some great pieces.) I learned early on that things that could possibly be reused/etc were not (lightly) thrown out in our families because there had been a time when you didn’t know if you would be able to find/fix something….

One of the things I have benefitted from in this year of Micro.blog is your perspective of a very different perspective on things—which, along with posts from others, is hopefully getting me attuned to look for privilege when examining things—so it’s really useful to see your “scarcity”/privilege take on this trend paired with the “capitalist/consumerist critique” angle that @sproutlight and @kordumb discuss 👍