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Minds Without Borders

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Decluttering

Decluttering Is A Trap; Just Stop Buying Crap!

Instead of binging and purging, I’m keeping my old stuff

5 min readApr 5, 2022

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I know Marie Kondo says you should “release” your stuff. She’s made a fortune advising people to declutter.

I will make zero money advising you to do otherwise.

There’s a reason we are being encouraged to dump all our stuff:

They want us to throw away our things so we have room to replace everything with new stuff. It’s the household version of binging and purging, and it’s not a good way to live.

It stuffs our landfills, consumes energy and resources — and often entails taking advantage of exploited workers making cut-rate, low-quality stuff. This is especially true of clothing, but compare the craftsmanship and materials of my very old (reupholstered) sofa and a brand new one.

Capitalism can’t survive too many people like me. I simply don’t buy enough new crap.

This is a good time to think about buying less stuff.

Broken supply chains, looming world war, a pandemic that may spring back, inflation …. Maybe you’d like to think carefully about what you buy, and then … just ……

Minds Without Borders
Minds Without Borders

Published in Minds Without Borders

A thoughtful look at how culture, society, politics, media and economics affect us all.

Michelle Teheux
Michelle Teheux

Written by Michelle Teheux

Lover of literature. Former newspaper editor. Fascinated by everything. Contact: [email protected]. To buy me a coffee:

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