Spark Joy
The Whole Point Of This Is Money.
I want women and non-binary people to be richer. I want us to live in peace with money, knowing that we’re secure and that we can live our best lives. I believe that the world benefits from this. People that have been traditionally excluded from wealth building becoming wealthy will shift the balance of power and that’s necessary. I feel like a tiny little thing shouting into a big universe, but I’m sure of myself and what I’m achieving.
My path to getting here wasn’t straight forward. We didn’t discuss wealth when I was growing up. I was certainly encouraged to save, my mum balanced her cheque book every month, both parents had an income and were wary of credit - middle of the road, every day stuff I suppose - and I’m grateful for it but we need to go further!
I wasn’t taught about the mechanics of wealth building. To me, it was just another ‘should do’ on the to do list, like I should eat my greens, do well in school, tidy my room - it wasn’t until much later that I understood why we needed to get to grips with our money.
And there are many whys. The pandemic opened my eyes, the reckoning with racism within the knitting community, running a business, getting married, inheriting some money. All of these, in different ways, threw into sharp focus what money actually means, personally, culturally and socially.
Personally though, the book The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up by Marie Kondo (affiliate link) absolutely changed the game for me. And it’s probably not until many years later that I realised how this impacted my money stuff - she talks a little about money in the book but it’s not a main thread.
The Marie Kondo Premise
We have too much stuff which is why we spend our lives overwhelmed, doing loads of stuff in the house and never getting anywhere. The key to a tidy, functional home is to own only things which bring you joy - everything else can go.
She offers a really specific and regimented way of doing this whereby you sort through different categories of things - collecting together everything in that category, holding everything in turn and deciding whether it sparks joy. If it doesn’t, it goes. If it does, it stays. Then you move to the next category.
The second stage is to decide on a home for every single thing that’s left.
This is all done in a short span of time - a few weeks or months and it’s called a ‘tidying festival’ - after which you should never need to tidy in the same way again. You will have exactly the right amount of stuff and you won’t want to ruin the balance that feels so good in your body.
I actually never did the ‘tidying festival’ which she’s actually quite adamant on, I did do a lot of sorting and clearing though and I’ve never been the same since. The idea of moving from a four bedroom, three storey house in the UK to a two bed apartment in Stockholm is just impossible with the way I was living beforehand.
Criticism of The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up
That something ‘sparks joy’ has become a bit of a laughing stock over the years and I’ve always felt kind of sad about that (not that Marie is bothered - she’s living her best life doing what she loves every day and making bank). People who didn’t take the time to read the book imagine her saying all sorts of dogmatic things, even putting words into her mouth.
The Books Thing
You see repeatedly is that she tells people to only keep 30 books and throw everything else out. She actually says that she keeps around 30 books now but that you should keep the amount of books that is right for you after good reflection.
She also saves book decisions until quite far down the tidying festival road because she acknowledges that they’re sentimental items which hold a lot of hope, identity and expectation, so it’s difficult to make a clear decision (the sunk cost fallacy).
She understands books import.
There is even a sticky situation where she describes ripping pages out of books for the quotes that she wanted to keep and getting rid of the rest - I’ve got to admit that that smarted a little (a lot…) - but the point is that we keep an entire book when what we actually want is a single phrase.
Spirituality and Silly Women
Once you’ve decided to part with an item, you’re supposed to thank it and move on. This also received a tonne of criticism: silly woman, thanking her things, they’re not sentient.
But why not?
It’s clear from reading that book, that the Shinto religion plays a big role in how she sees objects. I don’t know a lot, but a basic understanding of Shintoism is that there is spirit in everything and they need to be valued, be looked after and to have a home. I’m not sure I can fully get into the spirituality of it but yes, things need to be used.
When I was first Marie Kondoing my life, I gave away the last of my university books. These had been sat for over a decade, on a shelf, not being used, because ‘books are too precious and I shouldn’t give them away’.
Yikes! What’s precious about them being ignored?
It pains me, looking back, that they might have been 100 times more useful to the kids studying straight after me than ten years down the line but I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
Links To Finance
I knew this would be a long one so I know I’ll come back to it but to sum up, I thought I’d bullet point a few financial things I picked up from this book which I hope it might encourage you to read it for yourself.
“…it is crucial to tackle this job within a short space of time whilst your spirits are uplifted. After all, it isn’t desirable to stay in a state of excitement forever.”
Two things here: get shit done whilst you’re excited about it! And the nod towards the role of your nervous system in setting things on the right path - use your ‘excitement’ (you could call that energy, stress, nerves) as a springboard to a softer life.
She warns against the habit of downgrading outside clothes to loungewear when they’ve got shabby which gives us this absolute gem - “The time at home is still a precious part of living. Its value should not change just because nobody sees us”.
I’m taking a lot from that - every moment is worth cherishing, home is important, we have the power to decide to the value of something to us, other people’s opinions are none of our business.
Her rule of thumb is to get rid of paperwork (including credit card statements…!) unless they fit into one of three specific categories, but the bit which I think applies to money is that the category of ‘needs attention’ paperwork (i.e. bills to pay, forms to fill out, letters to send) should be empty! If it’s got something in it, energetically, your attention is taken up there. An interesting thought - especially when I apply it to my inbox…
She tells people to get rid of spare buttons because people never actually use them - they either wear the thing without the button or it just languishes at the bottom of a pile.
I do not agree! I couldn’t disagree more! If the rest of the book is about loving your things and making sure that they’re used, then throwing away the means to do that seems criminal. I also… think she’d got a point. In reality, who is mending clothes? I wonder if people who have to much more time because they’re not tidying their house all the time might mend clothes? Just a thought.
My last point for now is about coins which she suggests you just put in your purse and use. I agree. Every time you tidy (in the UK anyway, we don’t really do cash here in Sweden…) you’ll find some coins and maybe you’ll put them in a pot or a piggy bank but they sit there (losing value to inflation) not being used or loved. We can love money by using it, not just hoarding it.
My re-read of this book inspired my newsletter on not giving gifts which kicked off the new year. Have you signed up yet?
Love Eleanor.xxx
