Do sentimental items provide utility? Only if you define utility in a way that includes "owning this makes me feel particularly good even though the object itself isn't otherwise functional." Which sounds a lot like "sparks joy."
So here is where I'm coming from. Does a hammer provide "joy", maybe I haven't used a sander in over a year. I don't miss it; it doesn't provide joy, but it is very useful when needed. Do photographs and souvenirs and personal items provide utility, I'd say so.
Her second book [1] covers this, with a few amusing anecdotes:
Take, for example, my vacuum cleaner. I got rid of it because it was an outdated model, and instead diligently wiped the floor with paper towels and rags. But in the end it simply took too much time, and I had to buy a new vacuum.
And then there was my screwdriver. After throwing it away, I tried using a ruler to tighten a loose screw, but it snapped down the middle. This almost reduced me to tears as it was one I really liked.
All these incidents stemmed from youthful inexperience and thoughtlessness. They demonstrated that I had not yet honed my ability to discern what brings me joy. Deceived by their plainness, I failed to realize that I actually liked them. I had assumed that if something brought me joy, I would feel a thrill of excitement that made my heart beat faster. Now I see things differently.
Feelings of fascination, excitement, or attraction are not the only indications of joy. A simple design that puts you at ease, a high degree of functionality that makes life simpler, a sense of rightness, or the recognition that a possession is useful in our daily lives—these, too, indicate joy.
This reads like a hotfix to patch up a bug in her reasoning. Maybe it is more coherent in the japanese original, but pushing joy onto something which has a purely practical reason seems wrong for me.
Actually I own several hammers which spark joy: a small mini-hammer which fits perfectly in my hand. A large sledge hammer which is entirely too heavy to be practical, but feels like wielding Mjolnir when I use it to break brake discs loose.
The real gray area is when you have some poor quality tools which you do need and use, and you can't yet afford to replace them with ones that do spark joy.
Yes, that dingy 'harbor freight zone' of joyless, but functional tools that would cost more than their utility to replace. I have found many tools I did not expect, can be rented at local stores. Its not like I need that brake tool every week to keep my home nice.
Living out of the sticks, the tool that brings me joy is the one that's already lying around in my workshop, and that I don't need to drive into town to buy on that once-in-a-year occasion that I need it.
Personally I try and buy tools second hand, as they are typically cheaper and of better quality than the new tools sold in hardware stores. And they can be resold for about the same I paid for them, making them free to own.
Apart, that is, from their alleged intrusion on my personal joy from cluttering my workshop. Which is rubbish - workshops should be exempt from this joyful thinking, they are places where you want to find that useful piece of scrap material lying somewhere - anywhere - when you need it.
I think what Kondo would say in this situation is that having those things sparks joy for you. You should keep the scrap materials, but try to organize them in ways that allow you to quickly see everything you have so you don't forget about or lose things.
One of her rules seems to be "Try to organize your objects in a way that each one can be viewed without having to move another". Pile is worse than a Box is worse than trays/drawers. Organizing your scraps by category and size would likely make them provide more utility to you?
But as someone with a cluttered workshop trying to figure out a good organization scheme, I may be thinking too much about this. Anyone have a quote from her about workshop/scrap materials?
It feels like you're arguing against something that isn't really what Kondo is offering, and she specifically discusses in reference to vacuum cleaners and screwdrivers (tools you don't need every day, but the frustration of not having is an "anti joy"). The joy concept isn't so rigid as delight in that moment, though it can be misconstrued that way.
What I think she would say about a workshop is that a well-organized (tidy) space, where everything has its place, so you know where to go when you need something, and where it goes when you have finished using it, is going to make you a happier person than having to dig through a toolbox/drawer/scrap pile to find the right tool or piece of wood.
In my experience, workshops are not devoid of joy, unless you work only on things you don't enjoy or find pride in, which seems unfortunate. My workshop memories are of my granddad making wood products of all sorts, my dad working on the car and various household projects, and my brother creating toys of various types (e.g. making our own cornhole set). The frustrations in the workshop were typically of not being able to find something I knew was there, but perhaps that isn't what you are after or expressing here.
Having a well-stocked toolbox gives me joy, because I like having the right tool available whenever I need one. There's no need to go through and evaluate every single item in there; the toolbox takes up the same amount of space whether it's full or nearly empty.
I would have said "utility" if I were writing it, but if "joy" reaches a greater number of readers, then it's probably the better choice. And you knew what she meant, anyway.
The problem is that there's a little more nuance than just "utility". As an example, take clothing. I don't think that anyone would argue that a single t-shirt didn't have utility. After all, I can wear it. However, I have several t-shirts from conferences or conventions that I don't ever wear. So while they have utility in theory, I'm not utilizing them in practice.
Yeah, I thought of that but I think you could take all those Ts and then the first one and second one would have utility (one while the other is in the wash) then each subsequent one would have less marginal utility, till some cut-off.
Reducing a methodology to a single phrase is bound to be... reductive. But if memory serves there was an example her book where at one point she did, in fact, get rid of her hammer and either used another object or borrowed one when needed.
Speaking for myself: I have more objects that have utility than I have space to put things away, so there's got to be more to it than that if I want to avoid clutter.
She did, but later bought another hammer (I think it was a screwdriver actually) because she realised that it did in fact spark joy by virtue of being useful.
