Minimalism, Marie Kondo, and a Pair of Slacks

Last year my wife picked up Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and read it on a day trip we made out to Shreveport. The concepts in Kondo’s book, something we've brutally turned into a verb (“Let’s Kondo this stuff”) are alluringly simple in their tactics. For those of you who haven’t seen the Netflix show yet (and it’s just a matter of time): you toss a similar group of objects into a pile, you pick everything up one by one, and if that object doesn’t bring you joy, you thank and toss it.  

We’ve tried it on a few piles—clothes, books, the kitchen. Full disclosure: I’m not very good at the method. When I pick up a piece of clothing, I don’t read joy into it so much as “is this comfortable?” or “is this useful?” or “does this fit?”. If it ticks enough of those boxes, I’m likely to keep it. With the exception of books and boots, my biggest clutter problem concerns items I still deem useful or future-useful. Lots of things fall into this vague category, but after 2-3 attempts at the same pile, I’m generally at my most joyous and the pile is looking happily slimmed down.

Kondo's method, while roaring onto center stage in its viral Netflix series, sits squarely alongside today's minimalism zeitgeist: a rejection of 80s/90s consumption combined with 2018’s obsession with personal productivity. With only 5 shirts to wear, I won’t have to spend precious minutes every day wondering what to wear. It’s a minimalism that’s built to support the ever-consuming need to adequately make use of every last second of every day, and less so on classic religious or ascetic grounds. Steve Jobs here I come, that’s ten minutes saved that I can drive into my side hustle.

All well and good. After a few piles, I’m sold. I’m on the train and ready to go. In the morning I certainly prefer brewing a cup of coffee, listening to the water quietly rising to a boil, to frantically digging through a drawer of socks for the matching pair that must certainly exist. Focus me by only letting me pick from five coffee mugs instead of 15. Give me the exquisite joy that comes from a simplified life.

Except. Except for that damn pair of slacks.

Slacks aren’t anything special, but in this case they are very metaphorical. Slacks are the bare minimum of what’s needed to find, get, and maintain a white collar job, the kind that allows for a matched 401K and a mortgage. Slacks are effectively gatekeepers for a certain socioeconomic status—you can’t show up to an interview in jeans or a pair of workout shorts. A decent pair of slacks can run from $60 (on sale) all the way to the hundreds. They are an item that is necessary for day to day existence, but for someone living paycheck to paycheck, every pair will be hard won and protected. When I stood there, staring at my pile of clothes, I was met with seven or eight pairs of slacks. Using Kondo’s method, I lopped these by more than half.  

I am lucky enough to have been able to afford those slacks. There was no saving required, they were bought as I needed them. I was able to lop those in half with Kondo’s method because I am able to buy more.  

Take someone living paycheck to paycheck, who saved 3 months for a single pair of slacks, and now owns eight pairs acquired over years of focused effort. During those years, they lost a job and also had a health scare that cleared out what little savings they had. Their safety net is minimal, at best. To this person Kondo’s method must look insane. It is a method which presupposes a world where the ability to consume and the availability of that consumption is always there. It (and other minimalist trends) is less a rejection of 80s/90s consumption than an embrace of the very systems that allowed us to over-consume in the first place.

It’s an embrace of Just In Time (JIT) inventory system, a world that requires a well-oiled supply chain and a near perfect supply to meet demand, that eschews stocking up on anything like ye olden days of Just In Case (JIC). It also embraces the server farms that make ordering what we need fast, easy and trackable, as well as the vast armies of workers hidden in factories and warehouses that produce and route replaceable goods cheaply to our doorstep or local mall.

Without these systems the method falls apart. If the opportunity cost of throwing something away is high because I must save a month, or wait a month for the next shipment to come in to the only store that carries my size, then the stability afforded by collecting things for a rainy day outweighs any joy gained from a less cluttered, organized space.  

Is the method other things, some great? Of course. Like most systems, it’s all in how any given method is applied to the details of our individual lives. If my minimalism demands that I throw out my french press and coffee grinder for pods or little packets of instant coffee, then that should give pause. If Kondo’s method helps me reduce my consumption overall and reintroduce goods I wasn’t using into thrift stores, then that is a net benefit, both in terms of economics and the environment. More affordable cheap goods plus more reused goods is never a bad thing.  

But back to the slacks. Not one week after paring down my slacks to three sets, I found that I needed a certain pair and color for a work event. The dizzying climax to my story about slacks is I went to the store and picked up a new pair the day I needed them. I was able to attend the work event in the way I wanted, looking presentable and ready to network and further my career. I didn’t have to compromise on style, or wear an old pair with holes, or miss the event entirely because I couldn’t afford a new pair. In short, the core thing we must understand about this method is that it is for people who can afford it. People who are relatively protected from scarcity, who can feel the cushion under their butts.  

I can afford this method, and for those of us who undertake it (or any other minimalist trend) that uncomfortable idea should be acknowledged.