You can spring clean your Twitter from negativity with this KonMari tool

With many of us using the time at home in quarantine to organize our closets or kitchen cabinets, we’ve never thought to do a spring cleaning of our social media feeds. Twitter is a great way to keep up with breaking news, hilarious memes, and friends—but it can also be a breeding ground for a whole lot of noise. A tool created by a former product designer at Facebook can help you unfollow the Twitter accounts you’re just not into anymore. Of course, it was inspired by the queen of clean, Marie Kondo, herself.

Back in 2019, Julius Tarng felt inspired by Kondo’s signature “KonMari Method” of getting rid of items that no longer “spark joy” in your life. But instead of physical items, Tarng wanted to declutter his Twitter feed. And there’s no better time than now to curate your feed and rid some of the negativity.

Tarng’s Tokimeki Unfollow plugin clears some of your digital clutter.

FYI: Tokimeki is the original Japanese word that has been translated to “spark joy” in English, the concept that Kondo made famous in the mainstream, according to Wired.

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The process isn’t a quick one. The tool goes through each account you follow one by one. For each account, it shows you a feed of its recent tweets and asks you if it “still sparks joy or feels important to you?” You can then keep following the account, unfollow it, or add the account to a Twitter list. Lists curate your feed in a more streamlined fashion—which is never a bad idea in our era of information overload.

As Tarng told Wired: “On Twitter, if keeping up with activism or political issues is important to you, then you should keep those around. But if it’s actually making you really sad, then maybe you make the decision to keep up with that on the New York Times rather than on Twitter.”

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By getting rid of some of the accounts on your Twitter feed, you might feel calmer. Research has shown a link between our social media consumption habits and our mental health. Especially in this unrelenting news cycle, hitting that “unfollow” button might just be positive for your spirit.