Let’s Talk About Marie Kondo

The Queen of Tidy, Marie Kondo, recently said that she has given up her quest for tidiness in her own home. Has her crown become tarnished? Absolutely not. Her life has changed, and so have her priorities.

When “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” was released to much fanfare, the media takeaway was SHE’S COMING FOR YOUR BOOKS. With those headlines blaring all over the news and social media, my response was, “you’ll pry my books out of my cold, dead hands!”

And then I decided to move from the west coast to the east coast. And I had to make some decisions about my belongings, including my books. When the choice is between keeping all of my books or spending another $1-2,000 to move them, well, the decision was easy. (Mostly.)

Life circumstances change, sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. How flexible we are in the face of these changes is what allows us to grow. For me, it was understanding which of my belongings held enough value in my life to move them 2,900 miles. For Marie Kondo, it is having three children and realizing that 1) having a tidy home with three small children is next to impossible, and 2) spending more quality time with her young family holds more value for her than constantly tidying up.

Plenty has been written about the racism-soaked backlash aimed at Kondo.  A white woman (surprise, surprise) called Kondo a monster. Because the two things people in the western world love to demonize are Asian people and women.  The racist backlash got even uglier when she opened her KonMari shop.

Despite my knee-jerk reaction to relinquishing my precious books, once I read (and saw on her Netflix show) what she really had to say (i.e., nobody—especially Kondo—was coming for my personal library), a lot of it makes sense!

As this piece has been marinating in my draft folder for a couple of weeks, I realized it was time to earnestly unpack my initial visceral (if somewhat misinformed) reaction at the thought of culling my library. In recent meditations, vignettes from my childhood played. Years of constantly moving. Years of “losing” many of my belongings in moves. Years of losing friends as I changed schools yet again.

The ones that hurt the most, of course, were my dogs.  Buffy. Paco. Lady. Three times I arrived home from school to find them gone because we were moving someplace that didn’t allow dogs. Or my mother or grandfather were tired of having them around. Whatever.

I fought for a lifetime to have agency over things that mean a lot to me.  And with that agency came the bonus gift of insight. Going even deeper than “does this spark joy?” or “do I really want to move this across the country?”

Applying KonMari principles to what I already have is a good way to feel less overwhelmed by clutter. Applying the principle to an item before I make a purchase helps me feel a lot less anxious about the money I spend.

So, to those people who, somehow, felt vindicated by Kondo’s change of heart (by, I don’t know, out waiting her?), try some introspection. Instead of prostrating yourself (and your credit card) at our various Temples of Consumerism, be sure that you’re clear on what need that cartload of stuff fills in your life.