You have a thing at 2:00 PM so you set a reminder for 1:00 PM because you don’t want to be late, but you should eat by 12:00 PM. That means you should start preparing food by 11:30 AM, but you want to double check or confirm the appointment before 11:00 AM before everyone goes to lunch. So if you want to finish your other tasks by 10:00 AM, you ought to start at 8:00 AM, which means you’ve got to wake up at 7:30 AM and you may as well get ready to go out then ahead of time, and that’s how something that starts at 2:00 PM effectively starts at 7:30 AM and lasts the entire day.
ME. ME. ME.
Literally how I plan my day when I have a thing
This is literally just being a functional adult with basic organisation and planning skills.
It isn’t some special *thing*
No, it’s not. This post is about my executive dysfunction. It’s my performance anxiety and my depression. It’s dozens of people with ADHD in the comments remarking that this is the only way they can make appointments– often with each stage of this process tied to an alarm. Many of those people routinely fail even with that forethought. It’s people with chronic pain or disability who clock every activity in their day by how long it takes, when they have to prepare, how long they’ll have to stand or work, etc.
I am sure “functional adults with basic organization and planning skills” go through a milder experience of this thought process. But it’s comfortable to them– not something they think twice about, let alone make a post about. I made this post when I was dreading going to get my hair cut. A haircut. I made this post because I was reflecting about how crazy a simple visit to the salon was making me. It was an appointment I called for myself, on my own terms, an experience I enjoy and actively wish I did more often. But I don’t. Because making appointments is so hard for me, because I have executive function problems. It’s been about 9 months since my last haircut.
I almost flubbed college because I dreaded meeting with a single professor once at the beginning of a semester even though I wanted to.
I haven’t gone to the doctor since I got new insurance. I just struggled for three weeks to bring myself to arrange for a mandatory safety recall upgrade for my car so its airbag won’t explode into metal shards and kill me if I’m in an accident. I often fail to go out, to arrange meetups with my friends, to achieve my personal functional goals simply because all of that is going through my head whenever I have to make simple appointments or complete basic tasks.
Does that sound like “literally just being a functional adult with basic organization and planning skills?”
Capitalism will put the bill on your grave and harass your grieving family until they pay
One of my cousins passed away unexpectedly at the age of 35, and had been paying back a loan from the bank. About two weeks after his death, my great aunt received a statement from the bank (his mail was being delivered to her house) about a late payment. She called the bank and explained the situation and the only thing a manager could say was “Well, that’s unfortunate. We can arrange so payments will resume in 30 days, that should be enough time to have already paid for the other arrangements.”
On top of the unexpected $10,000 funeral, cremation and burial bill, my aunt had to finish paying my uncle’s $5,000 loan. She’s a disabled retiree, on a fixed income, and could barely afford to pay for her insulin for diabetes. She nearly lost her home of more than 40 years. Fuck the system.
She didn’t need to pay. When people die, their debts are not their family’s responsibility.
In fact, it is outright illegal to try and collect those debts from a person who didn’t cosign the loan and isn’t executing the will.
Banks count on people not knowing that last comment so that they can still get money
They really do.
My great-grandmother had her identity stolen before she died at the age of 93, and thousands of charges were racked up on credit cards in her name. After she passed away, they called my mother to try and collect. My mom laughed at them, and told them: “She’s dead, good luck collecting.” The credit card asked my mother, “Don’t you want to clear your grandmother’s debts? Don’t you want to clear her good name?” My mom laughed at them again. “No,” she said. “Because a 90 year old wasn’t watching porn with those credit cards, and her name is fine. Don’t give credit cards to old women likely to pass away soon. This is on you.”
Which is how I learned as a young child to always question collection agents, and to never pay off debts that aren’t your own. They often can’t even collect that money from the estate, if there is one, depending on how you write your will and what kind of account the money was kept in.
DO NOT EVER PAY OFF DEBTS THAT AREN’T YOUR OWN.
If a loved one of yours dies and bill collectors (credit cards, loans, etc etc) start calling you off the hook and request that you pay off their debts, tell them in no uncertain terms to go fuck themselves.
The reason being is that the moment you give them a single penny, that debt is now on YOU because you’ve now agreed to pay it off.
Do not agree to pay off their debt. Do not pass go, do not give them $200.
That happened to my grandma when my grandfather passed away. They had been separated for two years and he had some debt. They called her not even two weeks after the funeral and she told them where he was buried and ended it with “when you get your money bring me back some too.”
I was just reading an article on how much backlash Marie Kondo has been getting from some white westerners (especially women it seems).
And I’m just baffled. I expected dismissal from a lot of people, if only because of the animism and how some of the techniques are much more intensive than the average person’s… folding underwear, for instance, will strike most people as excessive when they first hear of it.
But there’s dismissal and there’s hatred, and it seems like the hints and bits I’ve personally seen are just the tip of the iceberg.
I’ve seen people blogging or vlogging about “doing konmari!” and then proceeding to… not. “Oh, she says do it all at once but I’m just doing my closet”, “I’m not thanking stuff I’m throwing out because that’s just kooky”, “I don’t have time to pile EVERYTHING so I’m just doing a drawer at a time”… that kind of stuff. Doesn’t seem so bad. I mean, they’re trying to cash in on the method by drawing in people who want to see it in action without actually fully doing it, but it’s not hateful as such – they’re adapting it and for many of them, it’s probably not malicious click bait, they honestly think they’re making it work for them and sharing that. It’s dismissive at times (they actually do use the word kooky, I’ve seen it a few times), and I’m quite convinced some of them only even bother calling it by name for hits, but it’s nothing compared to what’s apparently going on if you dig deeper than I did.
Some people have called her a monster. Some people have literally stated they could have come up with what she did and stripping her of any credit. More generally, people have just been pushing back with actual anger because, for example, they feel her values are totally foreign and weird and she’s trying to force them on them. Well, for one thing, she’s not forcing anything on anyone – obviously. The real issue, when you compare the reactions she gets to the reactions white male minimalists get, is that she’s a woman of color and she’s offering advice. It gets turned to “weird non white/non christian lady is imposing her views on me and she wants to burn my books OMG”.
And it makes the click bait people seem part of a larger, uglier movement, now.
And it’s maddening to me because… I am SO happy she exists. This is a woman who has a passion for tidying because of how happy tidy and clean places make her and has made it her job to share that. That is literally what she’s doing: she’s making a living out of helping people get the happiness she’s achieved for herself. Realistically, her method cannot possibly help everyone, but she really believes they can help some people so she’s going for it.
Yes, she makes money. Good for her, she’s making things better for people and that should enable her to make a living of it, and if a lot of people are buying, more power to her. She’s not deceiving anybody, she’s selling books about tidying that plainly state they’re about tidying.
Success is not evil just because it’s achieved by a woman of color instead of a white man.
First of all: Marie Kondo’s decluttering philosophy is not just some “woo-woo nonsense” she came up with on the fly. The Ascent explained that she’s using practices from Shintoism, which includes beliefs that nature and material things have spirits and must be treated with respect.
She’s not shoving her beliefs down your throat. In fact, she told Refinery29 that you don’t have to change your home if you’re comfortable with clutter. Just make sure “you still have a designated spot for each item, and also to understand how much quantity of each category of things you have and need.”
Marie Kondo: Maybe treat your home and possessions with respect, here are some methods to help you stay organised but feel free to tailor it to your self own life 🙂
The internet: Holy shit this woman must be burned at the stake immediately
This is what I’ve been saying when people bring this up in real life conversation. The idea that household objects have spirits is not new. And I think that bringing these beliefs into the practice of letting things go todeclutter your life is extremely effective.
We all joke about what Toy Story “did” to us, but it really is true that many people feel an inexplicable guilt when they throw something away, not just because it feels wasted, but because we feel, somehow, vaguely, impossibly, maybe it can feel sorrow.
I’ve only seen this addressed a few times by organization experts, and even then it was mocked.
Marie Kondo connecting her culture with that universal worry and telling people it’s okay, normal, to have that anxiety, and to give them ways to cope with it (i.e. thanking the object for its time in your life) is a really effective way to help people let go of these unecessary possessions!
Moreover, in the United States, many of us have been raised by our parents’ generation on the idea of the “starter house,” a smaller space we deem only acceptable until we can “upgrade.” But our generation can’t afford that.
In the show, young couples with children say they don’t have enough space, that their house is too small, and Marie Kondo teaches them that in fact, they do, and it’s not, they just need to learn how to manage and prioritize their space. People end up happier about their situations and lives.
The truth is we do live in a highly materialistic and throwaway culture, in which we accumulate a lot that we don’t need, until eventually we are drowning in our own Stuff.
This is especially a problem among the poor and disabled (both of which I am), because we hold onto things we don’t need now in case we need them later because we can’t just buy them again. But I think that fear of throwing away something we’ll need later grows to extremes, until we are trapped in a mess created by our anxiety.
I think it’s extremely refreshing for an expert to come in without judgement, without looking at us as if being poor and living in a mess of hand-in-hand, like so many others do, and saying there is a way to bring peace to your space, no matter who you are. She meets people on a level they can function on. Everyone is different with different needs, and she works with that.
This anxiety, along with the judgement we are Used to feeling from people who have jobs like Marie Kondo is what has made so many people feel so defensive and negative about what she has to teach, but it’s no excuse for the racist and culturally negative attitudes people use alarms against her work.
I have OCD, I am poor, I have a clutter problem. Solving it isn’t easy. I’m getting rid of stuff I think I can’t possibly part with. But once it’s gone, I feel so much lighter.
You don’t have to live by her ideals or even have any interest in her work at all, but the things being said about her and the dismissal of her work and culture need to stop.
