Rethinking the big spring clean chuck-out frenzy: how keeping old things away from the landfill can ‘spark joy’ in its own way

Wed, 11 Jan 2023 11:51:31 +1100

Andrew Pam <xanni [at] glasswings.com.au>

Andrew Pam
<https://theconversation.com/rethinking-the-big-spring-clean-chuck-out-frenzy-how-keeping-old-things-away-from-the-landfill-can-spark-joy-in-its-own-way-195568>

"Driving home recently, I encountered a familiar sight: four dining chairs on
the kerb waiting for some sucker to rescue them. Loading them into the car
(sucker!) I wondered: how long were these chairs in shed limbo-land before
finally getting kicked to the kerb?

When a wooden chair goes a bit wonky, it feels counter-intuitive to throw it
away when it’s mostly OK. It’s often demoted to the shed, with the optimistic
thought: “The wood is still good. Maybe it could be fixed.”

But will you really fix it? Sell it? Give it? Keep it? Nah. Chuck it.

Chucking has become easy – and socially acceptable. The pressure to de-clutter,
galvanised by the Marie Kondo tidying-up craze, can feel moralistic. “Just
chuck it already!” we say to ourselves, or our partners.

Kondo’s books (more than 13 million sold) implore us to discard ruthlessly any
item that doesn’t immediately “spark joy”, with Kondo urging us to:

not be distracted by thoughts of being wasteful […] to get rid of what you
no longer need is neither wasteful nor shameful […] so, arm yourself with
plenty of garbage bags and prepare to have fun!

Kondo promotes throwing things “away” or “out” without addressing where exactly
that nebulous place is."

Via the ABC:
<https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-12-27/spring-clean-rubbish-marie-kondo-waste-reuse-repair/101801594>

Cheers,
       *** Xanni ***
--
mailto:xanni@xanadu.net               Andrew Pam
http://xanadu.com.au/                 Chief Scientist, Xanadu
https://glasswings.com.au/            Partner, Glass Wings
https://sericyb.com.au/               Manager, Serious Cybernetics

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