The Invention of Clutter and the New Spiritual Discipline of Decluttering

Abstract This essay argues that the popular global decluttering movement epitomized in Marie Kondo is a new spiritual discipline tailored to a particular cultural moment in which members of affluent societies, especially women, are caught between the shame of displaying too much “stuff” at home and the guilt of discarding it. After suggesting reasons for the movement’s neglect by theologians, the essay offers a brief history of the “invention of clutter.” Through this history, the essay frames decluttering as an expression of “makeover culture” that posits a timeless aesthetic self. Decluttering functions as a spiritual practice of late consumer capitalism that converts its followers to a disposition of detachment through procedures that mirror Christian conversion. While appreciating the attention the movement shows to women’s domestic lives and to material things, the essay offers a theological critique of the movement’s construction of an aesthetic self who is absolved of guilt by escaping time and the ecological web into private, timeless space. The essay commends instead a narrative, ecological self whose engagement with material things reflects a sacramental vision that issues in virtues like frugality.