Trego's Mountain Ear

I figure it says good things about the state of a marriage when a spouse can bring home a book on housekeeping and find it well received.

We’ve recently had our fourth anniversary, and a few days later, my husband brought home Spark Joy by Marie Kondo (to his credit, he did not spend money on it. It’d be an odd day when he met a homeless book he didn’t want to adopt).

I’ve found it interesting, but a bit urban. If I was writing it, the practical questions when evaluating whether or not to keep an item might come sooner.

Do my worn out sneakers spark joy? Not really, no. But also, I really shouldn’t throw them out before I find a replacement. This gets extra emphasis, as we are rural, I shop infrequently, and supply chain issues appear perpetual. Kondo is very confident that whatever it is, you don’t actually need it, and will be able to substitute something else in a pinch. As her example involves abusing a frying pan to hammer nails, I’m not convinced.

My snow shovel doesn’t spark joy either. But she’s right that since I have to keep and use it I probably should work on cultivating a better attitude about it.

I did appreciate the distinction she made between cleaning and tidying. Semantics? Possibly, but very logical. Cleaning, as she puts it, is the removal of dirt. Tidying is putting your stuff away. She’s right, too, in observing that tidying gets in the way of cleaning. Rather, the need for tidying gets in the way of cleaning.

I’ll confess that I saw the chapter for people that think they can’t get rid of books and thought something along the lines of, ‘yeah, nope, not talking me into it’. And she didn’t, so readers can rest assured that I remain the same person and have not been replaced by an alien. That said, the comment on being the sort of person that fits the books you have kept was an interesting one. Because I think she is correct that a book collection can say a lot about its owner.

I’ve read far enough to discover she suggests storing your books (the ones you keep) out of the way somewhere. I haven’t yet found out of she’s a proponent of organizing books by color (she seems a little too sane for that, but I recall that trend getting big around the same time she did…)

Ah, well. More on that next time.