Marie Kondo betrays her whole premise by launching e-commerce store full of junk

https://news.avclub.com/marie-kondo-betrays-her-whole-premise-by-launching-e-co-1839960688

by ilamont • 7 years ago

122 98 7 years ago

news.avclub.com

vslira• 7 years ago

To be fair, I think her shtick is throwing useless stuff away, not avoiding acquiring it in the first place (because if you didn't have, you wouldn't need to discard it). With this new store, she profits from both ends of the junk lifecycle.

jameslk• 7 years ago

Throw away crap so you can make room to buy NEW crap? Genius. That sounds like an idea straight from SV

signalsmith• 7 years ago

I've seen the question raised whether the "minimalism" (in terms of not owning much) often attributed to Marie Kondo is actually an accurate representation of what she says. The alternative interpretation being something more like "mindful ownership".

I'm in that second camp, slightly confused by people saying things like "Marie Kondo thinks I shouldn't own more than 20 books" or whatever, because that wasn't what I understood. The point is to think about whether that number of books is an effective use of your living space - and the answer can be yes.

So yeah, an online store seems a little odd, but by this point my default position on anything M-K related is "take a second and make sure this isn't misrepresenting her views". Maybe a little shop full of neat things that Marie Kondo likes is... fine? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

kaybe• 7 years ago

I agree. It seems perfectly in line to get rid of all the things you actually don't like (but failed to notice in daily life) and replace them with things that make you happy.

TheOtherHobbes• 7 years ago

Do the items in this store come with a guarantee they'll make you happy?

If they don't, how can anyone be sure they won't end up in the "Random crap I bought for no good reason and never really wanted or needed" pile?

arkades• 7 years ago

In fairness, her answer to “ it what if I need it later?” is “then you can just buy it again!”

Her shtick has always been “get rid of stuff you don’t need” layered on top of rabid consumerism. This doesn’t seem the slightest bit out of character.

criddell3• 7 years ago

What she knows is that you often don't need it later.

asdff3• 7 years ago

She isn't telling you to buy it brand new from retail. That's the absolute worst way to buy products. Buy it again means turn cash into utility, and if you buy used and sell once you are done with that utility, you can end up at zero net loss.

I moved into an apartment where I had to cut my own grass. I bought a mower for $50 and cut grass all summer. The next spring, I moved to a different apartment without a lawn and sold that mower for $50. If I ever need to cut grass again, I'll be back in the $50 mower market.

Net cost is zero to me and I have only just enough utility as I ever need, which is exactly what kondo envisions. No rabid corporate machine has been fed with my transient lawn care needs, just more circulation around the hyperlocal economy that is removed from globalism.

ggggtez• 7 years ago

On the other hand, a $14 empty bottle for hand soap, or $180 for a cheese knife... I mean, come on.

There is mindfulness about what you own, and then there is selling overpriced junk using your brand just like everyone else. Sure, you can be mindful and enjoy your MK $220 fruit bowl, but really what you are buying is the brand, not the bowl.

I think there is an implicit "don't buy things just because you want other people to see you bought it", which is contradictory with the idea of selling overpriced knickknacks that only serve to show other people that you bought into some kitchy fad.

klyrs• 7 years ago

or $180 for a cheese knife...

If it costs more, you'll, um, buy fewer of them?

yellowapple3• 7 years ago

I can understand the soap bottle¹. A dedicated reusable glass container instead of a bunch of single-use plastic ones is less wasteful, and looks better, in my opinion. $14 ain't bad for that, price-wise, assuming they're good quality (which is a big "if", in fairness, but still).

$180 for a cheese knife, or $75 for a tuning fork and a crystal the sum of which costs half that on Amazon (let alone Alibaba), is on the other hand quite absurd.

----

¹: Disclaimer: my employer sells (among many other things) glass bottles pretty similar to the ones on shop.konmari.com. something something these are my opinions something something not representative of my employer something something

Aloha• 7 years ago

I've decided to limit myself to one bookcase full of books, for similar reasons. Similarly, I'm trying to get rid of any technology that I can readily go buy another one at a reasonably cost anywhere.

mcguire2• 7 years ago

A room full of books sparks joy in me.

mumblemumble• 7 years ago

I think where the confusion comes in is that, at least in the English translation of the book, there is a lot of mixed messaging. The general narrative arc of the chapter on books was, "Sure, if you really love books, I guess you can own a lot of them, but let me now spend 5 pages browbeating you with exposition on how you can't really love more than a handful of books at a time, and talk at length about how how my life was greatly improved by throwing my favorite book, the one book that has brought me the most happiness in life, into the trash."

That said, I'm pretty sure there's nowhere in the book where it said that a 4,096Hz tuning fork - that's the perfect frequency for sparking joy - can't possibly spark joy.

On the other hand, that laptop computer brush. . . I imagine the woman who wrote The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up, the book that argues forcefully that the only good container is either made of cheap clear plastic or an old shoebox, would have advocated for dusting your laptop off with a cleaning rag.

On the other other hand, the woman who wrote that book wasn't a world-famous figure with her own popular series on Netflix.

smacktoward• 7 years ago

There is also the way that, in a capitalist system, every message eventually gets swallowed up and transformed into a way to sell products. It's just the nature of the beast. The hippies started out preaching the importance of love over material wealth, and their message ended up getting twisted into a sales pitch for Coca-Cola (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VM2eLhvsSM).

So in the end, it doesn't really matter much what Marie Kondo's message is; once it became popular the system was inevitably going to fold, spindle and mutilate it until it could be used to sell products, because that's what the system does. It deflects critique by absorbing and redirecting it, and it is really damn good at doing so.

brightball• 7 years ago

Kondo summarized: "If it doesn't bring you joy, throw it out."

baddox2• 7 years ago

I get what you're saying, but it also seems like a bit of a stretch to describe her "philosophy" as nothing more than "own anything that you like."

It would be odd if a popular advocate of healthy dieting opened a store selling a bunch of addictive junk food, and people jumped in and claimed that the person's philosophy is really just "mindful eating" and that if you think about what diet will make you happy, the answer might be a bunch of addictive junk food, and maybe that's fine!

criddell3• 7 years ago

it also seems like a bit of a stretch to describe her "philosophy" as nothing more than "own anything that you like."

That's not really what he said. Mindful ownership isn't "anything you like".

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

I've always thought about whether I really need any given thing every time I move.

octokatt• 7 years ago

Went through the e-commerce site they reference. Besides spiritualist tools like tuning forks (useless to some, some people dig it, I try not to hate on fandoms of any flavor), I wouldn't call anything in there completely useless.

Maybe overpriced, but overpriced, high quality, purposefully minimalistically designed items are a staple now. Given the number of questions you can find on /r/minimalism of "what is the most minimalistic toothbrush", this is mostly harmless in the way capitalism tends to be.

The store is for people trying to deal with their anxiety by adjusting their environment to be more like a luxury spa/hygge cottage in the Alps. At the point where buying things from her website sounds awesome, I'm guessing you've already read the books and gotten something out of them.

danharaj3• 7 years ago

Marie Kondo's main criterion for keeping stuff is whether it makes you happy to have it. "Does this spark joy?" It has nothing to do with the utility of the items in question.

Blackstone4• 7 years ago

Does it spark joy?!? I don't have a toliet brush because I find it joyful...it's a utility...

rs23296008n1• 7 years ago

Because I own a toilet brush I feel a tiny amount of joy each time I don't have to use my bare hands to clean the toilet.

Your preference may be different and that's ok.

Tomte• 7 years ago

And, surprise, she discusses this exact retort to a simplistic summary of her method in the book.

It's fascinating how many people in this thread have never read anything she wrote, take a pithy sentence some other non-reader put forward as an accurate representation of what she stands for, and then "rebuts" her with the most glaringly obvious counter-example.

segmondy• 7 years ago

well, hoarders would love her, because all their garbage spark joy!

jgeada• 7 years ago

Minimalism is something only the truly rich can actually afford to do: https://priceonomics.com/post/45447777955/is-minimalism-just...

Money is the ultimate backup for missing things or for things that are needed infrequently. Regular people can't afford to keep minimal, once you have paid for the item, it needs to be kept for future uses, even if those are very infrequent.

MFogleman• 7 years ago

I think that is painting with a fairly broad brush. Head into Target, and somewhere near the centerish of the store, diagonal to the greeting cards and cosmetics, is aisles and aisles of stuff.

Not sheets, or plates, just stuff. Decorations to go on an end table, whos likely purpose is only to hold the decoration. Knick Knacks to go on that one wall with too much empty space.

But lets go back to sheets and plates. How many sets of sheets do you own per bed? Is there a reason for that number? For years, the answer was "More than 4" for my bed. There was "The good sheets", "The warm sheets" and the rest were sheets that I used because the good sheets were in laundry pile and I havent done laundry yet. Even then, why have the other pair of sheets?

Minimalism isn't necessarily "Dont own a drill you dont need it", but more of "Dont buy stuff to put on shelves that you bought for the sole purpose of putting stuff on but you had more shelf than space so you bought more stuff but now its too much and you need another shelf"

coldtea6• 7 years ago

Minimalism is something only the truly rich can actually afford to do

Hardly. I know lots of minimalist people that barely make ends meet (and could have loaded their credit cards to get a house full of junk like other people I know, but they didn't) -- you just have to get out of the rat race.

A writer that lives in a bare apartment, doesn't even have a TV set, doesn't need a designer espresso machine, or to stuff the house full of IKEA, is not a "truly rich" person.

Some such people I know make like 20-40K/year (US equivalent, they are in Europe, but I'm pretty certain tons of people like that exist in the US too. E.g., does this person look "truly rich": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfmfz_8b5fA ).

And yes, this includes people with kids.

It's also not about having few but hella expensive "quality" things. E.g. you don't need a Macbook to be a minimalist, you can do it with a knackered PC laptop you use for 10 years.

ip263• 7 years ago

Maintenance is a big catch. You can either pay other people to maintain your things, or you can maintain them yourself. The former is expensive, the latter involves keeping an array of tools & materials. Cooking is another, and similar.

There's always the option of simply not doing maintenance and eating unhealthy, of course. But I wouldn't' consider that successful minimalism.

soperj2• 7 years ago

Definitely thought that the backyard was gonna be filled with stuff hahaha.

ps. You don't need tools if you don't own a car, and you don't need to be rich to not own a car, especially if you live somewhere with decent public transport and bike infrastructure.

mcguire2• 7 years ago

On the other hand one very easy way to tell a wealthy household from a poor household is that the poor household will have a shed full of rarely-used tools, things bought cheap at a flea market with the idea that when they are needed they will already be paid for, and odds and ends leftover from some earlier project that might be useful later.

WhompingWindows• 7 years ago

I disagree, I was a minimalist when I made 16k per year in a high COL area as a graduate student. Minimalism is about reducing spending, getting rid of pointless (and cheap) knick knacks, and de-cluttering your life. The poor and the rich can both do this...it's not some definitional quality of the poor that they can't have few possessions, in fact they are probably much less likely to own a lot of possessions.

ip263• 7 years ago

they are probably much less likely to own a lot of possessions

My observation has been the more hard up someone is, the larger their collection of almost worthless stuff "just in case". That used to be me, too.

rajacombinator• 7 years ago

It’s more about having a scarcity mindset than necessarily being poor. (Although the two are closely related.) As a grad student in a high COL area who posts on HN, you probably did not have a scarcity mindset.

vorpalhex• 7 years ago

Owning things comes with its own cost - the cost of storage, care, and upkeep. The more complex the item, typically the more expensive it is to store it decently.

Getting rid of things and keeping a smaller amount of possessions can be cost saving - but it does require you to invest in better possessions. If you're only going to keep one pair of scissors on hand, you want to be pretty sure those scissors will do anything you need and not fall apart.

That's not necessarily more expensive overall but it can require more initial investment - and that can be the rub for many people.

TeMPOraL3• 7 years ago

Owning things comes with its own cost - the cost of storage, care, and upkeep.

Care/upkeep is usually very minimal, especially with "dumb" items. As for storage, this is an inflexible cost. Your apartment has a fixed surface area for which you pay, and on a day-to-day basis, you only manage how dense you pack it with stuff. If you decide to throw away some stuff, you can't just shrink your house down and pay smaller rent.

This is why poor people tend to own a lot of stuff - because it's really hard to fill your living space to capacity with things, which makes stuff ownership effectively free on the margin.

bobobooey2• 7 years ago

How can spending less and being mindful of what you own a thing only rich can do?

Sure, if you're throwing away useful items and replacing them constantly then you're wasting money. But if you're buying only what you need, discarding items that haven't been used in 18 months, and constantly being mindful of purchases/items you own, there is no way it's "only for the rich".

What an absurd sentiment.

tylerhou2• 7 years ago

I haven’t used my plunger in 18 months. Should I throw it away?

TeMPOraL3• 7 years ago

It's simple: because the richer you are, the more you can replace storing items with just-in-time throwaway purchases or services. You can easily throw away stuff you haven't used in 6 or even 3 months, if you can afford buying them on the spot when needed. You don't need tools or appliances if you can afford paying for a service. Etc.

lm28469• 7 years ago

Meh, not really, it's more of a mindset. I don't own much and I'm far from rich, I'm not poor either, I could own more stuff I just don't like it. I'm always surprised when I visit people and see all the shit they accumulated over the years, it's like entering ali baba's cave. Almost as if there isn't a single week going by without adding more gadgets or useless things into their life.

I will move to a new place in a few days and I could probably transport all my stuff in a regular car with foldable back seats. Actually the only thing that would fit your description is that I'll have to buy a washing machine, I'd gladly use public ones if they were not so expensive.

patcon• 7 years ago

I lived in a city park without an apartment for 2 years, mostly Toronto and SF. It didn't require much ($CAD unless stated otherwise):

access to a kitchen once per day. a list of fave cafes. layered clothing. wool socks. 4 sets of undershirts/wear. 2 outerwear variants. tupperware. hammock tent ($100). bike ($400). bike lock ($60). bike multitool ($15). hand bike pump ($20). small backcountry backpack ($100). sleeping bag ($100). scrubba laundry bag ($50). leatherman utility knife ($60). spork ($5). white male privilege. single. $400/mo for groceries and entertainment. planet fitness membership ($22/mo). PO box ($400/yr). unlimited data plan (USD$10/mo).

yes, i was lucky to be able to do it easily, but no, true minimalism certainly does not require boat loads money, just the above, plus planning and commitment and some social capital as a safety net :)

gimmeThaBeet• 7 years ago

the most unbelievable part of that is where in sweet gigabyte do you get unlimited data for $10 in Canada?

LiquidSky2• 7 years ago

Good thing Kondo isn't espousing minimalism, then.

rifung• 7 years ago

Minimalism is something only the truly rich can actually afford to do

I disagree. I was forced to be minimalist because I had to live in a tiny space since I didn't have money to rent a bigger one.

You also need money to be able to accumulate things in the first place, like people who have 10 pairs of shoes or a huge wardrobe. I only buy clothes if I actually don't have enough and it causes me to do laundry too often.

perl4ever5• 7 years ago

"You also need money to be able to accumulate things in the first place"

Or time.

sorenhansen• 7 years ago

It's certainly stuff that I would never purchase, but if they spark joy for her, it seems perfecty aligned with her philosophy. Tastes differ. Meh.

coldtea6• 7 years ago

She betrayed her whole premise when she did a 10 paragraph idea into a whole TV series, books, and so on...

makz• 7 years ago

One person’s junk is another person’s treasure

newnewpdro• 7 years ago

George Carlin on Stuff:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MvgN5gCuLac

JoeAltmaier• 7 years ago

TO rehash an old line: I put her book in my hand, and it did not bring me joy. So I binned it.

spark28• 7 years ago

Maybe she should have a nicer 'minimalist' trash can available to buy on her site ...

tom-thistime• 7 years ago

She's not buying junk. She's selling. If that's not walking the walk, I don't know what is.

nabdab• 7 years ago

She’s pragmatic and has to somehow capitalize on her success. And the very reason everyone owns so much crap is because this is the way you can easily do that. Selling cheap shit to the masses. She was never preaching an end to consumerism or actual social change. She just had a cute pitch for a role that could provide her fame so she could get a payday.

No doubt tons of fans of hers will fill their houses with her crap-ware and the irony will be lost on them. But what does it matter? They’ll buy it because they want to express their alignment with her image through their spending. Just like they bought an exercise bike because they wanted to seem fit. And then they threw it out because she told them it was what they should do and they listened and now she’s saying buy tuning forks and they’ll listen.

krick• 7 years ago

I'm not judging, but I'm honestly surprised we care what Marie Kondo does and how she betrays her whole premise. Sure, I heard about her, but is she considered to be a respectable lifestyle guru in USA now, or what? I thought, she is just some media-entertaiment celebrity for housewives, and it's not like it is unusual for a celebrity (or anybody else, for that matter) to betray his whole premise about 500 times a day...

mrperson112• 7 years ago

She never claimed to be a minimalist. She only claimed to be tidy.

tim333• 7 years ago

The Guardian covers the story entertainingly https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/shortcuts/2019/nov/...

AAM2RF• 7 years ago

I honestly don't get the problem. If they had read the book, it should be obvious that throwing away "useless"(as in utility) stuff isn't the point of it. Sure, Marie presses hard, but she doesn't compel you to throw away things you like, just the stuff you think you like or you liked or may like in the future. In general, things that have no purpose being in the house.

Calling her store a site full of junk shows just how much some people got out of the book. I mean, she is just selling some novelties and if something on there sparks joy for someone, that's their business.

This utility only, multitool, male fantasy kind of minimalism that people want to believe Marie is all about is honestly very annoying.

deusofnull• 7 years ago

yeah, i think its mostly just a humorous title.

noneeeed• 7 years ago

It's the same simplistic interpretation of financial frugality, or just plain old sound money management. People like to present is as hair-shirts and gruel, and depriving yourself for no reason other than the accumulation of wealth for its own sake. But the whole point of good money management is so that you have the money to spend on the stuff you really care about, rather than wasting it on that which you don't.

ouid• 7 years ago

Sure, nobody should fault Kondo for being a capitalist, and props to her for introducing some Eastern spirituality staples to Western sensibilities.

Why on earth not?

rchaud• 7 years ago

This is to be expected, it's part and parcel of capitalism. If you have an audience, you will eventually feel the pressure to sell something to them while the iron is hot, as maintaining an audience is work after all.

It's the same as Youtubers pitching phone skins and makeup brands. Or bloggers pitching their books or filling their posts with affiliate links?

adolph• 7 years ago

Included in the collection is a Lego container--now thats something to spark joy and be tidy about it.

https://shop.konmari.com/collections/tidying-organization/pr...

riskneutral• 7 years ago

Why is the author picking on the tuning fork? The author even quotes Kondo explaining why the tuning fork has importance for her. Is it just that the author does not agree with the explanation?

yellowapple3• 7 years ago

Probably because it and the accompanying crystal are 1) marked up 100% relative to the comparable equivalents on e.g. Amazon and 2) seem to be aimed squarely at homeopathic "alternative" "medicine", within which 4096Hz tuning forks and quartz crystals and essential oils are all the rage.

In Kondo's defense, though, at least the product descriptions stick with vague weasel words like "believed to help restore a sense of balance" instead of actually making borderline-FDA-enforceable medical claims like snake^Wessential oil peddlers do.

yellowapple3• 7 years ago

To play Devil's Advocate:

Maybe the reason why this junk is so expensive is specifically to discourage people from cluttering their lives with it? Some of the more-obviously-useful stuff is more reasonably priced (organizers, soap bottles, etc.; there's a markup, sure, but it ain't extreme for a "premium" brand like Marie Kondo might be trying to establish). Meanwhile, the useless-looking junk is almost universally priced high.

Marie Kondo's playing a joy-sparking 4D chess game while we're here playing checkers.

huxflux• 7 years ago

.... But earned 150$ from me just now

ruxx• 7 years ago

You would have nothing that gives you no joy otherwise

Marie Kondo betrays her whole premise by launching e-commerce store full of junk

Related Stories