To Discard or to Accumulate: That is The Question

In recent years, minimalist home maintenance trends have gained strength with the well-renown Japanese organizing consultant Marie Kondo standing out among its ambassadors. Kondo promotes the construction of ideal homes through the evaluation of each domestic object, keeping those that would ‘spark joy’ while discarding the rest. Based on research carried out in Santiago, this article reflects on the various ways in which objects are kept, valued and arranged in Chilean homes. The relevance and pertinence of these new minimalist trends are discussed, since the results suggest that households are more frequently guided by an ethic of care and conservation, valuing the temporal and dynamic condition of their objects, as well as their participation in an ‘ecology of things’.