Tiffany’s Reviews > Goodbye, Things: The New Japanese Minimalism > Status Update

wouldn't have picked this up if i knew the author is a man, and a male executive (in publishing..! so that's how he got a book deal..) no less. there's just something about the smug steve jobs-idolizing bare-mattress-on-the-ground my-life-is-on-the-cloud uber optimized cool guy thing that rubs me the wrong way. a lot of this is common sense, or remixing parts of the konmari method, and some of it is just straight up silly.

'i don't need a couch or a proper living room because the café near my apartment serves as my living room' while glossing over the part where he says 'they don't mind how many hours i spend there.' outsourcing your couch time to a place where employees have to put up with u idk man. also 'if a friend suggests we do hot pot, i tell them i don't have the equipment so we should go to a hot pot restaurant.' i get the idea that he would rather spend more in the moment to save money having to buy and store equipment long term, but this is again outsourcing... bc in reality it means your friends are always going to be the ones to host, or you go out and everyone now has to spend more money than they would have if you'd just done home hotpot. like unlike you're treating everyone to dinner that's kind of unfair.

so yeah sasaki goes to extremes in a way that only a single, childless male executive could do, which makes me vastly prefer the encouraging and considerate tone of the konmari books. sasaki's writing is dry in a way that comes off as condescending. i also wonder how he fared without a proper living room during quarantine bc this was published in 2015 and it shows.

finally, i am ambivalent abt digital taking the place of physical/analog. he says you don't need a flashlight, calculator, notebook, compass, etc. because you have your smart phone. i get the sentiment but like what are you going to do when the power cuts out during an emergency. and i think over relying on smart phones for too many aspects of our lives is its own problem that has driven ppl to embrace 'phone detoxing.'

he says he uses his body wash as shampoo and to wash his dishes too... you can't eat at everyone's house....

wow he's like yeah my last girlfriend was out of my league embracing minimalism gave me the confidence to ask her out anyway. then she dumped me but i think it's bc i haven't yet fully understood everything minimalism has to teach me yet

some smatterings of good advice wrapped up in way too much sigma male bs