For all the various takes on KonMari (Kondo Mariko is her Japanese name), I am left wondering about what we as Christians haven’t been taught well in our church buildings with multipurpose spaces, cafes, and bookstores that is coinciding with this cultural moment. Why do we have so much stuff? Why are we or people we know getting rid of garbage bags full of things from one room of my/their home I/they don’t need, I/they don’t fit into, and that don’t spark joy?
Lovers and haters note that Kondo has hit a nerve around our stuff and our preoccupation with stuff, the accumulation of it, and the purpose of the stuff we surround ourselves with. Christians are not immune from that preoccupation even though we say and have heard that we can’t take our stuff to heaven (or our church buildings, for that matter) and yet the Christian industrial complex pumps out stuff, most of it geared towards (white) women sold to us at (white) Christian women’s conferences by (white) Christian women. There are several (white) Christian women who have built lifestyle brands around shabby chic, reclaimed wood decor, and statement jewelry, none of which we can take with us to heaven, and even as I look around my home I wonder what if any of it is about bringing about joy let alone bringing about God’s kingdom on earth as it is in heaven unless we think heaven will be a cross between Ikea and Magnolia.
And just in case someone is ready to pounce, I AM PART OF THE CHRISTIAN INDUSTRIAL COMPLEX. I am a published author promoting a book, side gigging sassy cross-stitching and bracelets. Part of my “brand” is that I often sport a t-shirt with a provoking message, and the other part of my brand can’t be copied because I bought the last blouse in the clearance section. I am writing because I am wrestling, and I hope my Dear Readers you are, too, whether or not you are KonMarie fan. I am also a neat freak but also a child of immigrants. There is no pretty way of drying my ziplock baggies that I have washed to reuse. There is no joyful way of saving every plastic container that can be reused rather than buying matching plastic food storage containers. Old towels don’t bring me joy but their stiffness and scratchiness help with exfoliation and absorption (I don’t use dryer sheets).
Kondo is Japanese. Her method is socially located in a country where space is limited and overcrowded spaces are giving way to tidiness, whereas here in the US an entire industry has emerged around people paying for additional storage to hold their extra stuff. Haters go on about how ridiculous it is to pare down a book collection to 30 books, but as one who has several bookcases throughout my home full of books I will never read again how many of us are too afraid to admit the books make us feel accomplished, intelligent, and therefore safe and affirmed? No? Me neither. It’s not a judgment, but I will be honest. The books I surround myself with say as much about my intentions around reading as they do about how I perceive myself and how I want to be perceived. Who wants to talk with me about that and not just about how my bookcases look so much better having gotten rid of many of the books written by white men?
The same goes with the rest of our stuff. Does a tidy home say something about our interior lives? Do we believe a tidy home is inherently better and therefore a reflection of my interior life being…better? Tidier? Closer to an ideal? What does this love/hate around Kondo say to us Christians about our relationship to the physical world and its connection to our interior lives? Or does it? Instead of Christians bragging about the number of books they have gotten rid of or kept, I want to wrestle with our relationship to the physical. I think that is in part what Kondo is doing and that’s why it’s hitting a nerve, for better and for worse. I am afraid that once again the Church has abdicated some degree of responsibility to the “culture out there” as if we can’t taste a bit of our own hypocrisy as we sip our fair trade coffee in church-branded mugs.