Max Daniels felt miserable. After living with two years of nonstop construction noise in her Cambridge, Massachusetts, neighborhood, her nerves were frayed. Finally, she shed the city life for a new home in the quaint and quieter coastal town of Marblehead. As she packed for the move, she pushed herself to ruthlessly purge possessions, following the mantra of Japanese lifestyle guru Marie Kondo, whose best-selling tidying guides urge readers, above all, to shed any belongings that don’t “spark joy.” But once ensconced in her new three-bedroom home, Daniels found herself with an empty attic and a heart full of regret: Why did she get rid of so many beloved books? Why did she toss her late father’s favorite radio?
“I realized there was no space pressure on me,” she now says. “I don’t live in Tokyo.”
Daniels, a life coach, had initially found a lot to like in the system Kondo outlines in The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up and Spark Joy and says she doesn’t miss 95 percent of the stuff she tossed. But she also realizes that her mood affected her decision-making process. “For someone like me, who has a burn-it-down personality, it’s easy to think a clean-slate comprehensive action will make you feel better,” she says, “but if you are feeling low, nothing is going to spark your joy.”
Daniels is far from alone in feeling that she became too caught up in the urge to purge. Across the globe, the Kondo craze has had people dumping the contents of closets and drawers onto floors, hoping to cull them down to a few prized possessions. It’s part of a larger trend that favors airy, minimalist homes with highly curated accessories, while leaving a glut of no-longer-wanted family heirlooms homeless. Those anvil-weight bedroom and dinette sets of decades past now sit unloved in resale shops, while younger consumers pick up sleek particle-board furnishings that can be more easily moved or abandoned.
It’s no passing fad, says Paco Underhill, CEO and founder of the behavioral-research firm Envirosell, but the result of a confluence of economic, technological, and sociological factors that are likely here to stay.
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