One of the comments posted in response to my blog about Japanese clutter brought up the topic of mottainai. One way of defining this concept is, “It's a shame for something to go to waste without having used it to its full potential.” Like many consumer-based societies, Japan has a massive problem of waste management so the concept of mottainai is very important, especially since the country has limited natural resources and such a high percentage of materials are imported.

Feng Shui is all about living in harmony with our environment, and this same concept lies at the heart of the Japanese concept of mottainai, made famous by Ms. Wangari Muta Maathai who won the Peace Nobel Prize in 2004. In the methods of clutter clearing I teach, the most acceptable way to dispose of anything unwanted is to recycle it. With care and planning, just about everything can be re-used in some way, as I have learned in the 18 years I have lived in Bali. Everything that leaves my home is recycled. One young boy comes round on his bicycle at dawn collecting plastic from my bins; another collects cardboard; a third collects old newspapers. They sell the items to recyclers to help supplement their family’s income. Any leftover food from my kitchen goes to feed local pigs. My old clothing goes to local villages. Things too old to be worn are used as cleaning rags. In a society where so many people have so little, recycling is a natural way of life, and it is wonderful to see that this lifestyle is now being adopted in the rich countries of the world too,

Another aspect of mottainai is that it is about reducing what is used, as in the motto, “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle and Repair”. You can save yourself a lot of clutter clearing by adopting the advice in the section of my book called ‘Stopping Clutter Before It Starts’, where I explain, “Think twice before you buy. Decide before you purchase anything where you are going to keep it and what you are going to use it for. If your answers to either of these questions are vague then you are about to purchase clutter. Desist from buying.” Other sections of my book give advice about re-using, recycling and repairing things

Yet another definition of mottainai, that I found at the website, www.mottainai.info, is that it is “the painful longing for things that have been lost.” When people first start clearing out their clutter they often worry that they will really miss something, but this is because they do not realize how much holding on to old things can hold them back and make them feel stuck in life. After they have experienced the liberating feeling of living clutter-free, they find it much easier to let things go and never miss them.

I believe it is unnatural for us to hold on to things. In just the same way as our bodies are designed to eat, digest and excrete, we are supposed to acquire things, use them and let them go. Think what happens if we try to go against Nature in this respect. Suppose we eat, digest and never excrete! We would quickly die from the toxins that would build up inside us. In a similar way, when we collect objects in our homes, stagnant energies build up around them and stop us moving forward in our lives. When we arrange our homes and our lives so that everything flows freely, everything works better. We are healthier and happier in so many ways.

Copyright © Karen Kingston, 2008
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