Spark Joy - Thoughts
Apr. 26th, 2019 09:43 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
yuuagoSo! I finished reading Marie Kondo's Spark Joy. I've already read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up; you can see my thoughts on that here.
Spark Joy deals with the same subject as Tidying Up: Organize your house by choosing what to keep, discarding things that do not please you, making changes in how you store things, and treating your house and the things in it with respect. But there are some differences between the two books.
Spark Joy has fewer and briefer personal anecdotes than Tidying Up, and the longer ones are mostly kept to the back of the book. It has diagrams for the folding, which can be helpful to see at a glance what she means by "folding and store upright". It also has much more detailed information on organizing the kitchen and bathroom. There is also more information on how to deal with the things that are necessary to keep but do not necessarily "spark joy".
I'm not sure if I would recommend one over the other, but since Spark Joy has a higher ratio of practical information vs anecdotes, I might suggest it over Tidying Up. It's also useful if you read Tidying Up a while ago and would like a refresher or additional ideas.
One of the things that I think wasn't explained in enough detail in Tidying Up was what to do about things that don't "spark joy" but are still necessary to have. These could be things like medication and related supplies, tax documents, household tools, or even your vacuum cleaner. In Spark Joy, she puts it this way:
She recommends praising these things for serving their function so well. Praising your things out loud sounds a little silly – but I can understand where she's coming from. Storing your joyless-but-necessary things in an efficient way, so that you will be able to find them and use them when you require them, leads to a certain kind of appreciation, I think, of the way they benefit your life – which isn't quite joy, but it's close enough for me.
A lot of the information in Spark Joy is the same as Tidying Up, but some of it is added or elaborated on. I'll jot down the suggestions I found most useful that appear specifically in this book. (For suggestions from Tidying Up, see my entry on that*.)
☆ During the tidying process, storage is temporary. This is something I never thought about before. It's important to find a specific place to keep all of your things, but it's difficult to do this when you're in the process of working all of it out and figuring out which things to keep. Miscellaneous items, in particular, might belong to more than one category, and it can be difficult to decide where exactly they should go. It's okay to store things in a temporary spot, or consider their homes to be places that they belong "for now", until you've finished discarding and tidying everything.
☆ Treat a walk-in closet as a small room. This one doesn't apply to me, because I don't have a walk-in, but it makes sense to think of things that way; if it's treated as a room rather than a "storage space", it'll be easier to designate a place for everything. It also puts some of her other advice into perspective, because it makes so much more sense when realizing she's probably talking about very large closets. I could never in a million years fit a bookcase in my closet, or have the space to display posters in it. It's nice to know that I'm not doing something wrong, that it's just advice that doesn't apply to my situation.
☆ If you're having difficulty deciding which things to keep in a certain category, start by choosing your top three. If you have a whole load of stuff, determining which ones "spark joy" can be very challenging, but it tends to be easier to pick three favourites out of the bunch. Things tend to be easier from there.
☆ If you have equipment from hobbies you no longer pursue, now is the time to part with it. This is another one of those common-sense things, but it's helpful to see it written down like that, I think. If you don't do an activity any more, and do not foresee yourself doing it in the future (be honest with yourself on this), it's okay to let it go and rehome your supplies or discard them. This is advice that I really need to take; I used to be very into art, but I am not any more, and the remnants of that are still present in my room. Allowing myself to let go of that is going to be quite a challenge. ;)
☆ Do not store linens, bedding, and other fabric items in plastic, because plastic traps moisture. Instead, remove them from their packaging, and use them/store them in the same way that you do your other linens etc. I live in a very dry climate, so it isn't as much of an issue to me as it might be in somewhere like southern Ontario or Japan, but it's still pretty practical as a way of preventing mildew.
☆ When it comes to kitchens, the focus is not on ease of use, but ease of cleaning. What this means is making sure things are stored before and after every use, so that it will be easy to wipe your kitchen down and clean all of its surfaces. This is an idea that Kondo came up with after observing restaurant kitchens – and hygiene is just as important in the home as it is there. It's definitely an idea I can get behind, because I've sometimes had a frustrating load of trouble cleaning the kitchen due to all the stuff my parents store on the counters. It's important that everything have a place where it belongs, but that place doesn't have to be on the countertop.
☆ If you have cabinets beneath your sink, use the height for storage. A lot of people (including me) put things on the bottom of the cabinet, leaving a lot of open space above that. This space can be used more efficiently by putting racks or drawers in there, so that you have more than one tier of storage surface. You can also use stacked bins, but this is not recommended because it makes it difficult to remove things from the bottom bin, so it's suggested to only do this if you're storing extra supplies in there (such as surplus toilet paper). I've been meaning to try the drawer/rack thing out myself in my bathroom under-sink cabinet, because I feel like it would really help keeping things more organized! But it might be a while before I can find something with the correct dimensions to fit.
☆ When selecting photographs to keep, arrange them by year (or best guess). By dividing them into subcategories in this way, it's easier to select which ones to keep. Normally I'm not interested in the anecdotes, but Kondo provides a lovely little story about how she went about choosing photographs to keep for a special photo album project, and it illustrates the method pretty easily. Also – putting your photographs in albums is a good way to keep them, rather than in a box and such. It's easier to appreciate them this way. Sometimes it takes people a while to get around to this – so, what better time than after you've chosen which ones you want to keep?
☆ If you can't bring yourself to discard something, keep it with confidence. She repeats this kind of advice several times in the book, which is good, because it's really important. I find that sometimes people have the mistaken impression that her method is all about discarding everything, but it really isn't. It's more about making sure that the things you have are things you really want to have, and not just that, but appreciating them and making use of them after you decide to keep them.
Just like with Tidying Up, not all of the suggestions in this book will work for everybody. But a lot of the general ideas are great. I definitely suggest checking it out of the library if you're looking for ideas for putting your living space in order.
Spark Joy deals with the same subject as Tidying Up: Organize your house by choosing what to keep, discarding things that do not please you, making changes in how you store things, and treating your house and the things in it with respect. But there are some differences between the two books.
Differences between Tidying Up and Spark Joy
Spark Joy has fewer and briefer personal anecdotes than Tidying Up, and the longer ones are mostly kept to the back of the book. It has diagrams for the folding, which can be helpful to see at a glance what she means by "folding and store upright". It also has much more detailed information on organizing the kitchen and bathroom. There is also more information on how to deal with the things that are necessary to keep but do not necessarily "spark joy".
I'm not sure if I would recommend one over the other, but since Spark Joy has a higher ratio of practical information vs anecdotes, I might suggest it over Tidying Up. It's also useful if you read Tidying Up a while ago and would like a refresher or additional ideas.
Necessary things that don't spark joy
One of the things that I think wasn't explained in enough detail in Tidying Up was what to do about things that don't "spark joy" but are still necessary to have. These could be things like medication and related supplies, tax documents, household tools, or even your vacuum cleaner. In Spark Joy, she puts it this way:
A simple design that puts you at ease, a high degree of functionality that makes life simpler, a sense of rightness, or the recognition that a possession is useful in our daily lives – these, too, indicate joy.
She recommends praising these things for serving their function so well. Praising your things out loud sounds a little silly – but I can understand where she's coming from. Storing your joyless-but-necessary things in an efficient way, so that you will be able to find them and use them when you require them, leads to a certain kind of appreciation, I think, of the way they benefit your life – which isn't quite joy, but it's close enough for me.
Practical Suggestions
A lot of the information in Spark Joy is the same as Tidying Up, but some of it is added or elaborated on. I'll jot down the suggestions I found most useful that appear specifically in this book. (For suggestions from Tidying Up, see my entry on that*.)
☆ During the tidying process, storage is temporary. This is something I never thought about before. It's important to find a specific place to keep all of your things, but it's difficult to do this when you're in the process of working all of it out and figuring out which things to keep. Miscellaneous items, in particular, might belong to more than one category, and it can be difficult to decide where exactly they should go. It's okay to store things in a temporary spot, or consider their homes to be places that they belong "for now", until you've finished discarding and tidying everything.
☆ Treat a walk-in closet as a small room. This one doesn't apply to me, because I don't have a walk-in, but it makes sense to think of things that way; if it's treated as a room rather than a "storage space", it'll be easier to designate a place for everything. It also puts some of her other advice into perspective, because it makes so much more sense when realizing she's probably talking about very large closets. I could never in a million years fit a bookcase in my closet, or have the space to display posters in it. It's nice to know that I'm not doing something wrong, that it's just advice that doesn't apply to my situation.
☆ If you're having difficulty deciding which things to keep in a certain category, start by choosing your top three. If you have a whole load of stuff, determining which ones "spark joy" can be very challenging, but it tends to be easier to pick three favourites out of the bunch. Things tend to be easier from there.
☆ If you have equipment from hobbies you no longer pursue, now is the time to part with it. This is another one of those common-sense things, but it's helpful to see it written down like that, I think. If you don't do an activity any more, and do not foresee yourself doing it in the future (be honest with yourself on this), it's okay to let it go and rehome your supplies or discard them. This is advice that I really need to take; I used to be very into art, but I am not any more, and the remnants of that are still present in my room. Allowing myself to let go of that is going to be quite a challenge. ;)
☆ Do not store linens, bedding, and other fabric items in plastic, because plastic traps moisture. Instead, remove them from their packaging, and use them/store them in the same way that you do your other linens etc. I live in a very dry climate, so it isn't as much of an issue to me as it might be in somewhere like southern Ontario or Japan, but it's still pretty practical as a way of preventing mildew.
☆ When it comes to kitchens, the focus is not on ease of use, but ease of cleaning. What this means is making sure things are stored before and after every use, so that it will be easy to wipe your kitchen down and clean all of its surfaces. This is an idea that Kondo came up with after observing restaurant kitchens – and hygiene is just as important in the home as it is there. It's definitely an idea I can get behind, because I've sometimes had a frustrating load of trouble cleaning the kitchen due to all the stuff my parents store on the counters. It's important that everything have a place where it belongs, but that place doesn't have to be on the countertop.
☆ If you have cabinets beneath your sink, use the height for storage. A lot of people (including me) put things on the bottom of the cabinet, leaving a lot of open space above that. This space can be used more efficiently by putting racks or drawers in there, so that you have more than one tier of storage surface. You can also use stacked bins, but this is not recommended because it makes it difficult to remove things from the bottom bin, so it's suggested to only do this if you're storing extra supplies in there (such as surplus toilet paper). I've been meaning to try the drawer/rack thing out myself in my bathroom under-sink cabinet, because I feel like it would really help keeping things more organized! But it might be a while before I can find something with the correct dimensions to fit.
☆ When selecting photographs to keep, arrange them by year (or best guess). By dividing them into subcategories in this way, it's easier to select which ones to keep. Normally I'm not interested in the anecdotes, but Kondo provides a lovely little story about how she went about choosing photographs to keep for a special photo album project, and it illustrates the method pretty easily. Also – putting your photographs in albums is a good way to keep them, rather than in a box and such. It's easier to appreciate them this way. Sometimes it takes people a while to get around to this – so, what better time than after you've chosen which ones you want to keep?
☆ If you can't bring yourself to discard something, keep it with confidence. She repeats this kind of advice several times in the book, which is good, because it's really important. I find that sometimes people have the mistaken impression that her method is all about discarding everything, but it really isn't. It's more about making sure that the things you have are things you really want to have, and not just that, but appreciating them and making use of them after you decide to keep them.
Final thoughts
Just like with Tidying Up, not all of the suggestions in this book will work for everybody. But a lot of the general ideas are great. I definitely suggest checking it out of the library if you're looking for ideas for putting your living space in order.
Yuu. Fic writer & book lover. M/Canada.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-26 09:04 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-27 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-27 08:05 am (UTC)With things like this, I find that the easiest way to part with them is to donate them/sell them cheaply to someone who wants to do that hobby but can't afford it.
no subject
Date: 2019-04-27 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-29 10:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-04-30 12:35 am (UTC)It's been an interesting experiment/departure from my usual material, at least.