What is Danshari
Danshari is a mental model pioneered by Hideko Yamashita via a book series in the 2000s, as a way to organize our lives by making deliberate choices. Per Yamashita, she got the idea from her yoga practice and a pilgrimage stay in Koyasan. I used the term mental model and not housekeeping tactics because I truly believe that this has far more practicality beyond just organizing our closets and belongings.
I first came across Danshari during my trips to East Asia in the 2010s, when decluttering mindsets such as Danshari and Konmari were a big hit in metropolitan areas. Typical Asian living space per capita is way smaller than in the US, making smart organizing an essential survival skill. My learning curve was also accelerated by my subsequent trans-Pacific relocation to China, which served as a rude wake up call that what we took for granted in an American home wasn’t (and shouldn’t be) well transferrable to Asia. Later on, I did a lengthy stay in Japan, hopping from one cramped AirBnB unit to another across the country with a carryon. The rapid changes in daily environment again prompted me to seriously ponder how much is just enough.
To put it simply, the word Danshari is composed of three Kanji characters, signifying the three stages we move through this model.
- DAN (斷) : to cut off
- SHA (捨) : to discard
- RI (離) : to detach
DAN - Diet on what we take in
Danshari puts a very strong emphasis on DAN and it’s not hard to see why. Dan literally means to cut off unnecessary connections. Take our closet as an example, if we don’t have any gatekeeping in place and just buy things as they catch our eyes, sooner or later our closet will be stuffed to the seams. Likewise for our mind, if we don’t practice any information filtering or exercise discipline with our mobile usage, we’ll easily be bogged down by all the attention grabbing sources out there.
It’s always easier to proactively control the incoming flow, than to passively accept things as they come, and trim down the inventory when they’re already occupying precious estate. Therefore Yamashita puts DAN as the first step in the model. Dan requires us to establish a very clear boundary and criteria on what we should accept and reject. There shouldn’t be any compromise in letting things in without thoughts, or yielding under pressure. Seeing it this way, it’s not surprising that Yamashita suggests her readers to practice the same way in interpersonal relationships and our daily responsibilities. Only by saying enough “No”s can we put enough care on things that truly deserve our “Yes”.
SHA - Detox our existing space
So what happens to all the things we’ve already accumulated before we know this Danshari concept?
SHA comes to the rescue. Per Yamashita, in deciding what to keep and discard, always align with the following criteria, which is centered on your relationship with the object in question,
- Me : does this align with my priority, preference?
- Now : does this align with what I am doing now?
To illustrate with an example, let’s think of an expensive decorative object that you received from a friend many years ago. Now apply the 2 rules above. Do you really enjoy showcasing this gift at home because it pleases you aesthetically? Or do you keep it just because it is expensive, and you feel bad tossing a friend’s gift away? If it’s the latter, that means the “axis of operation” (in Yamashita’s word) is not on you but on an external party (your friend, and the object’s market value). Or maybe you liked it before, but now that you’ve moved to a new apartment, it doesn’t mesh well with your new home’s furnishing anymore. Again, using the “now axis”, we have a better lens to look at each object and determine whether it serves its purpose now. We will be less tied to our past investment or judgment, or suffer from sunk cost fallacy when making important decisions. We might also have better safeguards against hoarding for those that “might be of use next year”, when we anchor solidly at the present.
Sha suggests that you anchor your decision at where the Me and Now axis meet. That is, to focus our choice on our current relationship with the object.
Again, this can be leveraged to our daily life. How many relationships do we maintain simply because of others’ expectation on us, not because of how much we enjoy the companionship? How many things do we do just out of routine and habit, but provide zero benefit to our current roles? How many obsolete views are we holding on that do nothing but block us from adapting flexibly to this ever-changing and complex world?
I think this stage is the hardest as it involves taking an honest assessment of ourselves and the things/ideas that we perceive are defining us. Besides lost aversion, deep inside our heart we might actually view discarding an item as rejecting a part of our past. To balance out this thought, think of the opportunity cost of keeping a stale object or idea. To avoid being “wasteful”, we often keep stale products that occupy precious space and can easily outlive us. Will we acquire this same product new today, or will we be better off with something else, or maybe even nothing at all?
To visualize what we’ve seen so far, let’s take a look at this illustration with a wide open faucet and a stuck outlet. It’s not difficult to imagine ourselves in the flooded houses, with our bingeing habits, full closet/refrigerator, our phone full of apps, etc.
RI - Provoke metabolism in everyday life
Now we have taken all the pain to filter any new incoming objects, and properly select and dispose of existing items that don’t fit us now. The last step is Ri, which means taking a distance from old patterns and things that continuously “pull us in”. To acquire a more birds’ eye view of our surroundings so that we can make more objective and holistic choices.
Thus Danshari is not a one-time spring cleaning routine. It’s more like a continuous practice in which you continue to let in those that will bring wellness, refuse new and let go of existing items that is harmful. The target is to create a healthy flow of objects in and out of your life, instead of being stuck in the storage tank illustrated previously. What matters most is not what you discard, but the discovery of your existing patterns, deliberately choosing those that you really care for, and finally gaining a more thorough understanding of yourself.
How is Danshari different from other organizing techniques
Prevention is the best cure
What sets Danshari apart from other decluttering methods is how it goes to the cause of the problem and attempt to uproot it fundamentally. What is needed is a constant awareness of our surroundings, our thoughts and behavior. It’s hard to gatekeep (Dan) if we aren’t even aware of all the “buy me/look at me” signals and what’s driving us to succumb to such signals. That can be our hidden emotion or desires, lifelong value systems, as well as subtle ambience influences, etc. I found practicing mindfulness as a very effective complement to Danshari, as it strengths the mental muscles that the latter depends on.
As Dan significantly reduces what we intake, our existing inventory will stop growingly uncontrollably. And we can then take an examined look at what we have. We can employ Sha’s Me/Now X-Y axis to filter out what we we really need/like now.
I also find it interesting that the fundamental approach of Danshari to take care of the root cause resonates well with Chinese medicine and computer programming. In the traditional Chinese medicine classics "Huangdi Neijing", which was written 2000 years ago, it literally stated that “the best doctors cure those illnesses that have not even manifested”. In other words, prevention is the best cure. Whereas, in computer programming, it’s been echoed by Atwood and Galanakis respectively that the best code is no code at all, and the code easiest to maintain is the code that was never written. Both look at things not only at their acquisition cost, but their often exponential maintenance costs (storage, upkeep, diagnostic, repair, disposing, etc.) Taking such TCO (total cost of ownership) view gives us a more complete picture of how much something is really going to cost us in the long run.
Refocus on ourselves
A lot of the declutter tactics aim at indexing and organizing our inventory. We are essentially working for/around objects, focusing on how to use our drawer space effectively. Say if we have 10 pairs of socks and our drawer has overflown, then we rush out to buy a bigger storage box to stow the socks. Danshari - especially the Sha stage, takes a proactive approach to focus on what we need, and build our surrounding around us. Facing the same 10 pairs of socks, instead of taking it as a fact that we have to adapt to (working for the objects), we instead introspect and ask the question, “what kind of clothing style do I like, and what socks will support that?”. Only when we know the answer can we pick what should go into the drawer.
Look at our relationship with the object rather than relying on external valuation
A very typical criteria for keeping or discarding an item would be its external value when we acquired it, or whether we can put it into good use in the future. We usually overestimate on these two accounts, resulting in inaction. Sha asks us to focus on our relationship with the object rather than relying on external valuation. Even if it was, and still is an expensive item, if we have no need for it now, it is not supporting our lives at all, and is of no value. Doing this as a habit might enhance our self confidence, decision skill and judgment.
Use external cleaning as a way to declutter our mind too
It goes without saying that a space without clutter gives us a more pleasant feeling than one that’s chaotic and disorganized. In addition, through practising Danshari to go over our possessions, we gain the side effect of establishing our very own criteria of what to let in and what to let go. We also did a thorough review of our history through the things we’ve acquired all our lives.
We now have a much clearer idea of our character, what kind of life we want to lead ahead, and what has been blocking our growth for so many years. The latter can be our automatic reflex, biases, value systems that we’ve acquired all through the years. They might have helped us in the past but were long overdue for scrutiny.
Conclusion
To reflect back, my trans-Pacific move has taught me wonderful lessons in pairing down to the essentials, both in terms of the macro living environment and micro objects I need to live reasonably well. To practice Danshari is not to ask you to disown everything to be a hermit. Rather, it asks you the simple question, “what do you need today to live your own life well?”. To keep a discerning and viligant eye on what’s really good for us admist all the buzz and hustle of modern day life. To regain our much needed mental and physical space when the cost of both data and physical goods is becoming so low that it’s always tempting to overload ourselves. It’s basically a way to live with purpose and awareness.
Note: all illustrations are translated from Hideko Yamashita’s book.