Possessed by Possessions - Harper's BAZAAR April 2020
The Marie Kondo backlash has begun, even as we struggle to achieve the minimalist interiors heroed on social media. Alexandra English digs through the psychological clutter to reveal our inner magpie and our counterbalancing urge to purge
MARIE KONDO IS A CLEVER WOMAN. In January 2019, she spun her bestselling book The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, into a Netflix series, Tidying Up with Marie Kondo, which convinced the masses that an orderly home begets an orderly life. The Kondo-ites were evangelical in their commitment to following the KonMari method, which advises people throw out anything that doesn’t “spark joy”. For many, decluttering was a born-again experience. Then, in November last year, she launched her online store, selling more than 100 items for the home. “Once you’ve completed your tidying, there is room to welcome meaningful objects, people and experiences into your life,” the site reads.
No one can accuse Kondo of being malicious. Human beings are possessed by possessions, and an online store is the inevitable next step in celebrity empire building (read: cash in while you’re still relevant). Her about-face from apparent minimalist to consumerist seems contradictory, yes, but is also emblematic of our attitudes towards our belongings. We simultaneously want to rage-purge our homes of stuff while also wanting to collect more beautiful b things. She knows that the joy of ditching possessions in the throes of pop culture fever is second only to the joy of online shopping. an Everywhere you look, people are confused about what to do The with their stuff, and no wonder. Kondo isn’t the only one trying to commodify the idea that organisation equals virtue, though her attempt is perhaps the most brazen (she’s selling a $110 tuning fork and crystal set. I know.) Ikea, whose mazelike stores are designed to take you past products you didn’t even know existed, let alone needed, recently posted a job ad looking to recruit 10 people for its squad of Städad (Tidy) Technicians, who will be sent out to people’s homes. “We want to alleviate the stresses within the home so that Aussies can enjoy their space and live a better life at home, improving their overall wellbeing,” the job ad read.
Clutter is suddenly evil. It means chaos and disorder in more areas of our lives than just our wardrobes and Tupperware cupboards. If there are jumpers over our armrests, it means our finances, career and romantic lives must likewise be in a state of disarray. If we fix the state of our cutlery drawers, the rest of our lives will surely fall into place as well and we will — finally, for the love of God, please — be happy.
Kondo and Ikea aren’t entirely off-base in their messaging. Research has found life satisfaction correlates with having fewer materialistic values, while a 2013 study from the University of Minnesota found that people who work at tidy desks are more likely to eat healthily, donate to charity and respect convention. It would seem cleanliness really is next to godliness. In a New York Times article titled “The Unbearable Heaviness of Clutter”, Dr Joseph Ferrari, a professor of psychology at DePaul University in Chicago, spoke about how mess can induce a physiological response that includes increased levels of the stress hormone cortisol, particularly in women. Sarah Cottman, CEO of the Institute of Professional Organisers (IOPO), said enquiries tripled in the two months that followed Tidying Up. (She says 99 per cent of her clients are women.) “The increase in requests when that series came out was huge,” she says. “And it was a different type of enquiry. It was people looking for a quick fix: ‘I want my home to be minimal. What do I have to do to achieve that?’”
But surely some people are leading productive, happy lives with unfolded laundry and one too many decorative cushions? It’s human nature to collect things, a behaviour that took hold in our psyches during a time when food and other resources were scarce. Yet it goes deeper still. As the philosopher and author Alain de Botton wrote in The Architecture of Happiness, “While a common reaction to seeing a thing of beauty is to want to buy it, our real desire maybe not so much to own what we find beautiful as to lay permanent claim to the inner qualities it embodies. ... What we seek, at the deepest level, is inwardly to resemble, rather than physically to possess, the objects ... that touch us through their beauty.”
Instead of being inspired to join in when the zeitgeist has an urge to purge, the bombardment of messages about decluttering, throwing away and paring back can make us feel anxious and guilty about having stuff at all. If everything you own sparks joy, you might question whether your joy receptor is on the blink rather than recognising that you’re already a conscious consumer whose belongings align with their values. It could also mean you realise that purging is a privilege: it’s easy to see our mountains of things as oppressive when we can easily replace the things we regret throwing away. It might also mean you are not immune to sentimentality.
We all have a place on the Spectrum of Stuff: some of us are hoarders, some are compulsive cleaner-outers, and most of us sit somewhere in the middle, slip-sliding from one side to the other. Knowing if your relationship with your belongings is problematic or middle-of-the-road is essential. People who suffer from hoarding disorder, says psychologist Jo Gravina, are unable “to part with any possessions, regardless of their value”. Researchers at Yale University found that when people afflicted by the condition are asked to give up belongings, there’s a spike in their brain activity that points to genuine pain that is analogous to drug withdrawal.
“The way we talk about hoarding disorder is sensationalised,” says Benjamin Law, the author, podcast host and playwright whose debut play, Torch the Place, tells the story of a family dealing with their mother’s hoarding tendencies. “We dismiss these people by saying they can’t bear to let go of things, or we make jokes about them. They become reality TV subjects, they become the butt of a joke, or even their illness is diminished [when we talk about our tendencies to keep things]: ‘I’m a hoarder, I can’t throw anything away, ha ha ha!’” Gravina agrees. “We tend to pathologise any behaviour in this area, and it can be quite offensive to those who are suffering from a mental illness. We don’t want to dilute the severity of this disorder,” she says.
Possessions can be especially hard to get rid of when they’re tied up with our identity. According to a 2011 study in the Journal of Consumer Psychology, we tend to confuse ‘mine’ with ‘me’. The minimalist trend forces us to confront ourselves in objects we don’t know we have placed such value in until we try to purge them from our homes. The more something reflects our self- worth, the more its loss hurts. If the grief of losing something is worse than the frustration of clutter, keep the clutter.
The New York Times ups the ante on this stance, calling for a liberation “from the propaganda of divestment”. “It is time to cele- brate the gentle art of clutter,” Dominique Browning writes. “We live, and we pick up things along the way: the detritus of adventure; the vessels of mealtimes; the books and music of a life of the mind; the pleasures of our daily romps through the senses.”
The KonMari method took off during a time when discovering it is possible to live with less was crucial from a sustainability perspective. But the mass disposal of tens of garbage bags from each house was so deeply concerning, Sustainability Victoria, for one, issued a statement: “All that clutter doesn’t just disappear once you’ve given it a kiss and thanked it for its service.”
The Australia Institute estimates that we spend more than $10.5 billion annually on “goods and services from which [we] derive no benefit”. According to The Conversation, Australia is the sixth-largest contributor of household waste per capita in the world. Dumping everything at Vinnies doesn’t solve the problem, with charities having to spend $13 million a year on sending unsuitable donations to the tip. For those reasons, 2020 needs to be less about throwing away and more about consciously consuming. Once it’s in the house, it’s harder to get rid of. “Our homes become mini landfills,” Cottman says. “We need to be good stewards of what we already have. Think about what it is you want from your home, rather than what you want to put in it. You need to be very clear about how you want it to operate.” Try to formalise how you’ll determine what you want to hold on to and what can go. Having a limbo pile where things can sit for a few days can be helpful too.
Of course, you can declutter like a born-again Kondo-ite, but if you don’t confront why the clutter exists in the first place, it’s just going to make its way back. Address your motivations, find a system that works and then, as Meeghan Bourne, the principal therapist at Holus Health Counselling, advises, think of it as a mindfulness activity. “Be cognitive about what you’re doing, what you’re keeping, what you’re throwing, and the impact you’re having on the planet. Pass that onto kids — teach them an appreciation for the smaller things in life and make their personality the big thing that matters,” she says. “Encourage them to have a love of themselves rather than the things around them. That will have more of an impact on the planet and how they want to live.”
This story originally appeared in the April 2020 issue of Harper’s BAZAAR magazine. Image: Gallery Stock/Snapper Images.
